Into Darkness is one of the better Trek movies, and it's truer to Trek than WroKh and FC. Though I have some issues with it. They should have discovered the area on Kronos they were going to bomb is inhabited. They chickened out on this, but it's implied by the patrol ship. They could have wrapped up the Spock subplot and set up the Khan Augment blood thing (which fits with Ent) a little better, but these are small issues. They could have the effects of Khan blood cells on Kirk be a subplot in 4. Maybe this is part of why he acts different in Beyond. Maybe Kirk will become more like Picard in this timeline.
The main problem with ALL Jar Jar Abrams' ST movies is that they include the orginal characters. Why this "creative genius" can't create a new, orginal and fesh story instead of recycling the well known characters. Why do they have violate characters and events we know. Jar Jar Abrams as a destructor of movies.
"How-- did you do that?" "Simple. See this satellite? It's solid matter. But the solid parts-- the protons, neutrons, and quarks of this satellite only constitute one _quadrillionth_ of its total volume!"
One thing that really bugged me is that the Enterprise just wandered up to Qo'nos and had no defences whatsoever. One should not simply arrive at the heart of the Klingons Empire with absolutely no resistance from a proud warrior species.
The promotion of this film was so funny because of the fan reaction. "Benedict Cumberbatch as John Harris!" Fans: "You mean as Khan." Studio: "NoooOOoooO!!! Not Khan! Really really not Khan!" Fans: "Right. Sure. It's Khan." :-) So much so that when the reveal finally came for sure, the reaction seemed to mostly be eye-rolling.
Exactly. It wasn’t so much that Khan was in the movie, it was the fact that this was an obvious “parallel” re-hash of Star Trek II, and fans saw straight through the whole John Harrison thing right away. But instead of either owning up to it or not responding to it, JJ himself repeatedly lied about it by insisting that Harrison wasn’t Khan and that Khan wasn’t in the movie. So, as is said in the video, the “reveal” falls flat and is irritating more than anything.
@@Chopperwocky Hey, by all means, don't go blabbing the plot in interviews or trailers. You don't even have to confirm when people guess. But lying just makes you look stupid when the truth comes out
I started rewatching Star Trek in chronological order a year and a half ago and I am almost finishing Voyager, I must say that discovering your channel and exploring your videos is making this journey a complete pleasure! Good job! Can't wait for more videos!
I've always felt that Khan should have actually been a new character named John Harrison, one of Khan's followers, thawed because he had a specific knack for hand to hand combat and weapons design. It would have given a great opportunity to see Ricardo Montalban frozen in one of the cryotorpedos also I freaking HATE this movie
My thoughts about Harrison are the same. I would have Marcus say specifically that they almost thawed out the leader, Khan, but knew he was too dangerous. They went instead with the more benign and willing-to-compromise fella named Harrison. Then surprise, he causes trouble because he still thinks he is a "superior being' and the rest of his scenes basically stay the same. He is just as bad as Khan could be under the same situation.
I agree that Khan is the biggest problem with this film. Either commit completely and use his name from the start, or just keep him as one of the Augments. In other words, if he was John Harrison throughout the film, it really doesn't change anything. If you must, have a post-credit scene showing one of the stasis pods with the name "Khan" on the side. Then again, I would argue that they should have gone in a completely different direction with a new villain.
Yep. Could have even had a fake-out with Harrison pretending to be Khan the whole movie and it gets revealed to the audience at the end (not the characters) by panning over the cryo freezers and seeing Ricardo Montalbán's likeness through the glass as the movie fades out. This would leave the potential for the 'real Khan' to wake up some day, and leave viewers to speculate on Harrison's motivations for pretending to be someone else.
@@andromidius it would even have been cool if they had made the name "khan" sort of an "i am spartacus" thing, where any escaped augment takes on the title until the true khan is restored. you could even have written in that adm. marcus already had the real khan executed in his tube for being too dangerous and unthawed john harrison with the promise that khan would eventually be restored, but harrison learns the truth triggering his violent rebellion and effort to save the rest of the augments while keeping the title. thats just a "top of my head" idea, but in any case it would have taken very little effort to improve the story
Solid review. Your take mirrors my own. I would point like to point out that the creators failed in one of their stated goals: This Khan is not Kirk's archnemesis. In fact, Kirk never defeats him. Spock does. Twice. First, Spock tricks him with the torpedoes. Then Spock beats him in the hand-to-hand fight. They took Kirks most iconic nemesis and put all the focus on Spock... again. One of the problems with the two JJ movies is that he's clearly in love with Spock, and the narrative focus remains on him for both movies. Sure, Kirk is going a character plot, but its always tied to Spock, and Spock's resolution takes precedence over his own. Combine that with the incredibly immature take on Kirk for two straight films, and it's kind of grating. Fortunately the next movie finally let us see a more mature take on the character.
This one's easily my least favourite of the Kelvin movies, it starts off OK but really falls apart towards the end for me. As others have said, having Khan in this wasn't needed and was just asking for trouble, if he was just John Harrison and not Khan in disguise it probably would've been better, and just going from being loosely inspired by TWoK to direct line lifting was disappointing to say the least. As great as he is, I didn't really buy Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan (probably why it would've worked better as John Harrison for me), personally I'd have loved to have seen Faran Tahir in the role if they absolutely had to go with the character, but obviously he was already Captain Robau in the previous entry so that would've just been confusing. If only...
Yeah I couldn't take Cumberbatch seriously as Khan. If it had been somebody else in the role it MIGHT have worked. I always used to despise this movie and Tried multiple times to force myself to like it and always felt annoyed and frustrated. Anyway I watched it the other night after getting the 4K boxset and I was surprised that I found myself really enjoying it and getting invested in the story. Still amazed
I came out of the theatre scratching my head… I have a lot of issues with Into Darkness but a number of them could have been solved by making Cumberbatch’s character Joachim instead of Khan. - He looks like the actor who originally played him. - It’s a character that you can play with as we only know that he’s fiercely loyal to Khan and is good at learning future tech. - If you kill him it gives Khan an incentive to bring his wrath in the next movie. Why oh why was Cumberbatch playing Khan?
Yeah, the character that Cumberbatch plays is a menacing villain, he's just not Khan. Making him one of the other augments would have totally solved that.
Monsieur Gauthier, _you_ are a genius. Someone else here thought that he was General Chang the Klingon (in altered by surgery disguise) what with all the connections leading up to the reveal. _Both_ these ideas are better than Cumberbatch as Khan & Khan's use here.
I sincerely thought for quite a bit of the movie that Cumberbatch's character was going to actually end up being General Chang trying to instigate a war. I think seeing an exploded Praxis gave me that impression, his character hiding on Qonos, Cumberbatch also seemed to be tapping into some of Plummer's other performances. Honestly would have been a better twist, and despite how popular Khan is as a villain General Chang was always a better foil for Kirk because of their similar backgrounds. They could have even tied the death of Chang's father to Nero's attack on the Klingon fleet from the first movie to tie Kirk and Chang together even more. Sadly this movie really just doesn't do it for me. It kind of left a bad taste in my mouth that made me disinterested in any sequels. I don't want to dismiss all the hard work and effort that clearly went into making this movie, but there is a general feeling of an extremely cynical motivation hovering over the entire film. Despite its shortcomings and carrying the negative baggage of this movie, Beyond ended up being a huge improvement over this one at least.
Damn, that’s a much better idea. With Weller having the role akin to Admiral Joe Sisko, I mean Cartwright, and General Odo (I never saw the director’s cut so I don’t actually know his character’s real name). Even though it’s a different timeline it makes sense that those military tensions would still exist.
@@kaitlyn__L Yeah the tensions between them would still exist, possibly delayed to a later point in the Kelvin timeline because Nero destroyed a Klingon fleet in the first movie. In order to rebuild their fleet they could have mined Praxis even faster and more recklessly, which is why it's destroyed so much earlier in the timeline in this movie. Cumberbatch would be a really good actor to play a young Chang as well. Oh well, missed opportunities which about sums up how I feel about this movie and the 2009 one.
One of my least favourite Star Trek films for most of the reasons mentioned. One of the biggest issues I had was the Vengeance. It was ridiculously oversized and over powered, and turned the Enterprise into a punching bag. I would presume it would be derived from the same technological base as Star Fleets top of the line Enterprise and would have just been a bit bigger and more heavily armed ship. This is more like the CIA secretly constructing an aircraft carrier ten times the size of anything else in the US fleet.
There was a model of Vengeance in the Admiral’s office in the first 5 minutes. Like, it was in the foreground of the shot. Totally ruined the surprise for me (new ship model + mention of Jupiter = duh). Who was this ship a secret from? Not the engineers or bean counters or _cleaning staff_ , that’s for sure.
As I remember the idea was stolen from an 80s novel by Diane Carey called Dreadnought! Much better written, of course. No augments, just a paranoid admiral with a pathetic paranoia of Klingons. I believe most of those novels are at least summarized on Memory Alpha.
I remember being in the theater just kind of bored through most of this one. I'm not even a huge fan (watched TOS and TNG growing up) but I was rolling my eyes at all the WoK references. It felt like they leaned too heavily on what came before, and didn't even do a great job of it, rather than making a quality original Star Trek movie.
Same, the call backs were nauseating, and the rest was mostly uninteresting. Spock yelling Khan was like they were purposefully trying to kill the series. Just makes it seem totally out of ideas. I’ve never really watched the TV series but I love the good movies. This wasn’t one of them.
The "nonsensical" reveal makes perfect sense if one understands that Khan knows he is in a movie and has read the script. This is a pretty common failing of a lot of modern entertainment. For example, it made The CW's Flash series unwatchable to me.
I feel like reworking WNMHGB (like some websites theorised based on Cumberbatch and Eve’s similarity in appearance to key characters from that pilot) into a modern action story with deeper morality-wrestling (amp up Kirk‘s inner turmoil, amp up Spock’s insistence he be killed before terrible things happen, have far more terrible things happen, go places subsequent similar Trek stories didn’t) would’ve still been better… of course an entirely original story would have been best.
I feel like reworking WNMHGB (like some websites theorised based on Cumberbatch and Eve’s similarity in appearance to key characters from that pilot) into a modern action story with deeper morality-wrestling (amp up Kirk‘s inner turmoil, amp up Spock’s insistence he be killed before terrible things happen, have far more terrible things happen, go places subsequent similar Trek stories didn’t) would’ve still been better… of course an entirely original story would have been best.
I became disenchanted with this one not long after it came out. Exactly as the video states, it's down to the script and the careless breaking of necessary limits on the power of certain technologies. And it make me think that JJ and his team simply don't know or worse, don't care. However... As the video states, everything else is so well done that it remains watchable on a surface level for the visuals and music alone.
@@joeandrew8752 Agreed. I know now that things set up in The Force Awakens went nowhere, or the payoff was terrible -- and it started the trend of "bigger explosions, bigger ships" etc. But it remains a very entertaining film if you don't think too hard about it.
JJ doesn't care he just wants things the way he wants them to be , the effect on canon or lore is somebody else's problem and can be dealt with in a comic .
I remember walking out of the theatre with the two friends I'd gone to see Into Darkness with, and all three of us were wondering why they'd remade Wrath of Khan because there were soooo many callbacks to that previous, and very successful, film. At times it felt like Orci, Kurtzman, Abrams, Lindeloff, and Burke opened the Star Trek Encyclopedia or went on Memory Alpha and found a bunch of references and just threw them into the movie. Which, isn't necessarily a bad thing, if it's done with a certain amount of care and caution.
I had a similar experience, feeling bothered they redid TWOK but worse. I had thought perhaps those unfamiliar with the original might have appreciated it more with not being distracted by the references, but my girlfriend at the time who filled those criteria actually could tell they were references and so just found it even MORE distracting and frustrating than I did.
@@kaitlyn__L That's the thing, people are smart. So even if they hadn't seen Wrath of Khan when they went to see Into Darkness, they'd understand there are references to Wrath of Khan in Into Darkness. For some it probably didn't bother them, but for others it bugged them.
This may be my favourite Retroreview you done thus far. In a way I actually like the ones you've made for bad/controversial Star Trek entries more than the acclaimed ones, because you're very meticulous in describing both how and why the movie fails, but also how it came to be made that way, exploring the reasoning of the creators. You're also very fair, judging the big picture instead of focusing on just small elements (which is an issue I see in many modern UA-cam reviews as a result of the popularity of video essays).
The big picture vs small elements is a great example of why we either ignore or don't notice flaws in "good" movies, but amplify those flaws in a "bad" movie. There are flaws, plot holes, etc. in every movie. However, when a movie is "bad", we take the time to focus on all those little things that bugged us to justify why we believe the movie is "bad". Whereas, with a good movie, we can acknowledge that something is dumb or a plot hole and yet shrug it off because the movie was "good". Whereas those same problems if the movie were "bad" would be shouted from the rooftops as a reason the movie was "bad".
Perusing the comments, I came to the realisation that the main issue against "Darkness" was not the ethnic background of Khan (the actor for the original iteration is not of South Asian heritage, either) but rather that there was no build-up the the reveal of the purportedly central villain; whereas TWOK (1982) did not need prior background scene(s) this entry needed to have at least flashback scenes, to tell the casual viewer of origin and motivation of Khan. Lazy story construction indeed!
That Harrison is Khan does not matter to the story. His origin does not matter either, either as Harrison or Khan. His motivation is explained well enough in the movie itself.
@@magnum3.14 But that doesn't even matter. His motivation is stated as he wants to get his people back. Nothing he does actually forwards that motivation in any way whatsoever. In fact, his actions should have only guarenteed the death of his people. It was only " because the plot says so" that it did not. He turned on the people who had his people with no apparent plan to deal with the aftermath of his efforts to kill them when it failed. He tried one half assed attempt to kill the Admiral and then fled to Qronos , where he could do nothing to extract them, and it was only by sheer plot contrivance that the admiral put his people in those ridiculous torpedoes and sent them right to the planet that the guy that wanted them back was on. Only the stupidity of his opponents and " plot" allowed them to survive. In any sanely written movie the admiral would have sent word to Khan that his people had been scattered to a dozen covert locations and that if he did not turn himself in in 24 hours they would be eliminated one by one and that if anything befell the admiral then they would all be eliminated at once. The admiral was willing to start a war with the Klingons, he surely would not balk at killing a few dozen peolecicles to try to get Khan .
@@daverobson3084 I say you make it too easy for your argument by saying it should have guaranteed the death of his people and that it was only plot convinience. It was my impression that only Harrison knew the people are in the Torpedos, and Admiral Marcus did not. So Harrison at the end was the one who knew how the Torpedos would act. And he knew that Marcus wanted to wage a war. So he gave Marcus a reason to wage the war now at his location, betting on him using the Torpedos. He gave Marcus the alibi to do what he wanted to do, and bet on Marcus doing that. Good enough for me. We don't know what Harrison would have done, had Marcus not tried to intercept him. Harrison already came close to the Torpedos, and had started dialogue with the crew.
@@magnum3.14 That makes...no sense. Admiral Marcus only had control of Khan because he had his people. Admiral Marcus had the torpedoes. Even if Khan knew the torpedoes contained his people and Marcus did not , there was zero reason to believe that anyone would send all 72 of them to take out one man. Even if they did then his expectation should have been his people all die in glorious explosions , along with him, and the start of a Starfleet v Klingon empire war . He had no reason to expect that Kirk, or whoever else would have been sent, would not have followed orders and blasted him to dust in a moment, giving hi no opportunity to free his people. Hell. he didn't even take the time he had to hide from possible retribution, staying exactly where he had teleported to( since when can Starfleet tech track teleportation across a galaxy anyway?????) No. That really doesn't help Khan's case at all. He gains nothing. His people all die. He dies. War starts. Marcus gets everything he wanted. Khan gets nothing he wanted. Kirk , and all on board, become war criminals.
The worst callback for me was Spock shouting KHAAANNN after Kirk's death. The scene was genuinely emotional, but the timing and delivery of that scream just completely ruined it. I remember being in theaters with my family and we all just burst out laughing. Also, I will never understand why this film took Carol Marcus, a brilliant scientist whose greatest fear was Starfleet using her invention as a weapon, and turned her into... a Starfleet weapons expert. I'm with you on this one. Not a terrible movie, but definitely messy. Excellent work as always.
The issue with Carol Marcus could have worked if the reason she (really David) was so fearful was because of her experience making weapons for Starfleet. She could be a sort of Nobel figure that regretted making weapons in the past and now wanted to make something that helped people. Though ironically in doing so created one of, if not, the most powerful weapons in all of history. Make a small scene at the end of the movie with her saying she can't do this anymore or something.
I just thought about how interesting it would be to see John de Lancie in the background scene of the Kelvin movies. Ideally he would be playing in a mariachi band at a bar Kirk is walking into. It would be even funnier to watch the production team and cast asked in interviews if they put Q in the Kelvin movie and have them just pretend like de Lancie isn't in the movie
One or two scenes set at the end of the Eugenics Wars as the walls were closing in on Khan would have helped the movie by setting up the reveal. One scene of Peter Weller discovering the Botany Bay would have helped, too. They wouldn't have to mention any names, just Weller taking one look at Khan in his suspended animation chamber and saying, "wake this one up." It would still be a dumb movie full of cringey moments, but at least one payoff would be earned. Also: enough with the spacing crewmembers scenes. I get that it's a bloodless but horrible death, but Star Trek went 40 years without gratuitous spacing. The camera can look away from that. Reaction shots of crewmembers can get that across. You do have actors in this movie, after all.
I'm loving these retrospectives, I first watched Star Trek NG, odd episodes anyway, along with Voyager and Enterprise when my Dad rewatched them, and the JJ Abram movies were on my agenda as a kid. I remember liking Into Darkness, but I cant say it was very memorable
One reason I love your retrospective is how even handed you are, as well as not being prone to reactionary vitriol. That being said, I had a far more negative reaction to the weaknesses of this film. This one leaned too heavily on nostalgia, and was just a bit much for me in that regards. I still think if they were going to do Kahn, either just do a feature length version of their first meeting - perhaps using Kahn's charismatic, devil-may-care attitude to mirror Kirk's flaws - or keep the Kahn manipulations, but have him personally behind the darkness spreading through the Federation. I don't know, the script was so sloppy, just anything else would have helped.
“Star Trek Into Darkness is still pretty good, but it should have been great.” What a great take. I really appreciate the way you don’t give in to the downward spiral of fandom backlash and hyperbole, and present a more reasoned point of view.
14:05 This is one of the few things i actually disagree with. Kahn was a warlord during the ugenics wars of the late 20th century according to the Original series and the crew of that show actually had records of him and knew who he was. Tge deliverey here makes sense in my mind. Kirk not knowing who he is is actually what confuses me.
I also disagree with Rowan for once in that regard, but you seem to forget that Kirk does recognize Khan. After the reveal he goes: "Why would Marcus need help from a 300 year old frozen man?"
@404 TV ....yeah, he is a well known infamous name in history, what's your argument? We today know who Genghis Khan was and we are much further removed from him.
I am one of those hardcore Star Trek fans that HATES this movie. As Rowan points out, there are things to like about this movie, but for me, they are overwhelmed by 1)Bringing Khan back poorly 2) Changing his motivation drastically 3) Changing his ethnicity 4) Changing who dies between Kirk and Spock 5) The VERY lame reveal of Khan 6) Spock not being a Vulcan, but a petulant angry man-child. J.J. said it himself, they could have made up someone new, instead of going to Khan. But they (Abrams and his crew) were lazy, disrespectful, and arrogant, much like Pine's Kirk.
as soon as it was leaked it might be Khans the movie was doomed. that box office it likely do normies not paying attention. I owuld like to see how much it dropped
I hated [the love interest] the most. It’s like Zoe was too big of an actress to bully into showing her underwear again, so they hired someone new whose only purpose was to get mostly nekkid. Star Trek isn’t perfect but it always tries to be a few steps ahead, this insistence on tickling nerdy peepees in the middle of a dramatic action movie was so gross and unnecessary, it was a clear step backward and such an obvious ploy that this video doesn’t even mention her once and nothing of value was lost. (Not to knock the actress, she did great for what she was given, I hated the knee scene she did it so well, but her character shouldn’t have been written that way in the first place)
Agree on all except 4. With as much parallel universe concepts as there are in Trek-like “All Good Things”-I don’t see it as foreordained that any one bridgecrew is preordained to die in an exchange between Kirk and Khan.
Yeah. Pine's Kirk is a smirking jackass. Can't stand him in the first two Kelvin movies, though I lose most of my hatred as the character matured significantly in #3( even if the plot of that movie is just as dumb as Into Darkness). I also could not stand the sheer stupidity of the admiral and of Khan's actions. Nothing Khan did actually should have forwarded his goal of retrieving his people, but should have instead guaranteed their deaths. It was only because the writers decided that the admiral needed to be some mustache twirling villain, instead of an intelligent adversary for Khan that that did not happen. Any sane writing would have had the admiral secrete the frozen followers of Khan on a dozen different planets and sent Khan a message telling him that they would begin eliminating his people , one every hour, if he did not turn himself in in the next 24 hours, and that any attempt on the admirals life would result in the immediate death of all of his people and a nonstop manhunt for Khan.
Here's the thing about the Kelvin movies for me: for one, ST2009 *was* truly a good movie. I had to go see it two days in a row just to process it because they were shoving so much information at me, I was on overload the first viewing. But the other two films to date, I really enjoy them the first time out, but when I see them again on DVD and now digital, I start to see the flaws of the movies, and the same thing could be said of the first 2 Star Wars reunion trilogy movies (I honestly couldn't have given a rat's azz about Rise by the time that came out). Common denominator: J.J. Abrams.
"ST2009 was truly a good movie. " Really. It wasn't. It was a hack job on the OT with a single character trait( or, imagined trait) taken from the OT characters and turned up to 11. What. Kirk is a maverick who sometimes broke the rules when it really needed to be done, and a ladies man in the OT( he really wasn't much of either of those, but he has the reputation). Now he's a smirking, smart ass, rule breaking, womanizer who does whatever the hell he wants, whenever the hell he wants (while smirking smirkingly). Spock showed occasional issues reconciling his human and Vulcan sides and dealing with emotion? Now he's a screaming , crying mess who flies off the handle at the slightest provocation and gets into fist fights because someone insults his mother. Ohura was a romantic? Now she's a relationship obsessed annoyance. Scotty was Scotty. Now he's uber Scotty. And the writing. Oh my, the writing. The federation is supposed to be a professional, civilized, exploration organization. Then how come they seem to act like 17th century pirates. When Kirk caused his first bout of trouble, any sane reaction by Spock would be to relieve him of duty( wait. I forgot. he didn't have any duties. He had quit Star Fleet and was a stowaway on this ship) and sent him to the brig. What DID he do? Stranded him on a desolate planet where chances are he would be dead in the next 5 hours. Then, when Kirk uses some miracle transporting tech ( which seems to work only when it is convenient for the plot) to get back on the ship , and he goads the acting commander into a physical altercation is he then sent to the brig( or returned to the death planet)? Nope. HE IS PLACED IN COMMAND. Shooting right past those who hold a higher rank than him, which is everyone on board as HE QUIT STARFLEET!!!!!
My biggest issue with Khan's presence in Into Darkness is that the exact same plot could have worked just as well, if not better, WITHOUT Khan in it. Khan's presence was always going to cause issues. Longtime Trek fans (myself included) would be very difficult to win over, no matter who they cast in the role, and new viewers wouldn't necessarily care at all about such an old name. Ever since I watched Into Darkness for the first time in theatres, I've had the opinion that "John Harrison" should not have been revealed to be Khan, but instead, one of Khan's old disciples (Joachim, maybe?). The writers get to have the exact same plot, but without the risk of audience pushback against Khan's recasting and personality shift. Longtime fans are still hyped, because Augments / the Botany Bay / the Khan connection, and new viewers get an interesting new villain who doesn't have or need quite as much backstory knowledge. And if they really wanted to, they could still include a post-credits scene (were those common yet in 2013?) to tease that Khan is still out there somewhere, sleeping... waiting.
Haha I've basically just written the same thing. John Harrison could have just been a member of Khan's crew - in this universe they just woke up a different person.
@@theredheadproject Or just avoid the Augment plot altogether since TWOK did it. Cumberbatch would have been better suited for a robotic 'Brainac-esque' villain. Perhaps the last remnant of a now dead civilianization, tasked with bringing that species back.
@@theredheadproject Yes, exactly! And as you mentioned in your other comment, there are plenty of in-universe easily justifiable reasons why they could have chosen to wake up one of Khan's crew, instead of the man himself.
@@NX232 Totally - I may not be remembering correctly, but in Space Seed I don't think they realised that it was Khan they'd woken up until they'd done it? So it could have been anyone on his ship.
The thing about Wrath of Khan is that Khan had great motivation to harm Kirk. Khan's family died because the federation or more precisely Kirk, dumped them on a planet and didn't come back to check on them, he's perfectly right to be angry, his family are dead because they were left with no means to cope with a natural disaster and the federation didn't take responsibility for their previous actions. Kirk however thought he was taking the most compassionate route to dealing with a problem as oppposed to lifelong imprisonment so they both think they're the good guys in this and there's some empathy on both sides for the audience. In this film they're literally strangers, Kirk is just in Khans way but Khan could have been anybody. Also, the notion of killing Kirk really annoyed me as it just didn't carry any resonance whatsoever compared to Spocks death. Star Trek had enjoyed three series on TV with minor success then one big movie in an era when TV shows just didn't jump onto television let alone shows with cult following only. The motion picture hadn't done brilliantly compared to Star Wars and Nimmoy had spoken openly about being tired of being typecast as Spock even calling his 1975 autobiography "I Am Not Spock". The idea of cinematic franchises was a long way off in 82 and the 80's infection of endless sequels hadn't quite kicked in so the idea that Star Trek would even get a second film was surprising and it was entirely believeable that it would be the last one, with Nimmoys open displeasure at playing Spock it was entirely believable that Spock death was for real, that this was how the story of Star Trek would end, 3 series, 2 movies, that's it, so long and thanks for all the fish. It had real weight. Modern audiences live with franchises and trilogies and bearing in mind we've *just* relaunched this franchise with the previous movie there wasn't a hope in hell they would kill off the central character in just the second movie, you knew he wasn't going to die and the fact they brought him back to life within 10 minutes just weakened it even more. The reason death hurts is because of it's finality, if it is to mean anything in a fictional world it must have lasting repercussions, if you're going to kill people and bring then straight back to life then just don't bother.
You've hit the nail on the proverbial, there! All the while JJ was winking at/mooning the audience with that role reversal "Khaaan" scene. Abrams going: "see what I did there? Aren't I clever? I do get Star Trek, I know what you all want. Bet you didn't see that one coming a mile away? I'm so smart!" Infuriating, doubly so, when there was no reason for it. In Wrath of Khan, out of the entire crew, only Spock could endure the radiation long enough to fix the core matrix. Here, all it takes Kirk, is to kick it a few times. Something absolutely anyone out of a crew of 500 could have done instead.
I love the scene where we see Zoe Saldana practicing her Klingon and the Klingon behind her nodding in approval. Because obviously he knows the correct pronunciation! The whole "Kirk needs to be less arrogant" lesson is a good example of why they should never have been promoted from Cadet to Captain in the first place (though that's the fault of the first movie rather than this one). And it doesn't stick because Kirk wins in the end anyway, without experiencing the defeat that Kirk suffers (with Spock's death) in the original. Even his dying seems to be only a minor setback!
Yeah, it's almost like there's a purpose to spending time in your career as an Ensign, Lieutenant and then Commander before being responsible for every single life on a ship as its Captain
You neglected to mention that Khan being in the movie played by Cumberbatch was one of Hollywood’s worst kept secrets at the time. UA-cam shows like MovieTalk frequently referenced that it was going to be revealed to be Khan and questioned why they even wanted to keep that a secret in the marketing.
You certainly have a singular talent for polishing a turd. A very good retrospective, in spite of my disagreement with the conclusions. As with 2009, the only thing I enjoyed about this film was the excellent score. Watching this film just broke my heart. I tried to be open minded, I really did. But how can I enjoy a film when my heart is aching so much the entire time? Give me Star Trek V over this any day.
Mythbusters proved that the easiest turds to polish were those of carnivores. Everything else just falls apart. I guess this means Abrams and Co are either vegans or vegetarians.
As far as JJ Abrams is concerned, it seems like with virtually all of the projects he has worked on he comes out of the gate with some decent ideas and flashy visual effects, but never has a solid, complete story arc. He showed promise with Alias, Lost, ST and SW. They all started pretty well, but just lost their way.
What kinda stings about this movie is the core plot is actually a truly great ST story - the innate tension between militarism and optimism is a solid premise for a ST movie; especially in the Kelvin timeline. It's just frustrating the movie doesn't properly explain the eugenics wars so the core thematic/philosophical tension of the movie never come to a head like it should. Also I agree; this movie has the best Klingon designs by far.
Another one where I disagreed with your stated overall impression but agreed with every actual critical point! I’m just one of those people who couldn’t really find space in my brain to enjoy it given the plotting had all those problems, and the Khan stuff was distracting. But redoing and inverting TWOK’s wending made my impressions leaving the film far more negative than it had been throughout most of it. I even actually pulled up the original Spock Sacrifice scene on UA-cam on my phone as a palette cleanser, standing outside the cinema entrance. I absolutely agree the VFX are amazing, I basically enjoyed all the Scotty stuff, and the score was brilliant. I just couldn’t get over all the story problems to actually appreciate the eye candy. What’s most frustrating is the story has a lot of elements I like, such as Scotty refusing to allow Admiralty to install unknown devices into his ship, or the corruption within the Admiralty with Marcus attempting to start a war with the Klingons. But all the Khan stuff steals focus in every scene, meaning none of the other ideas get room to breathe. It’s the only one which I saw in the cinema where I haven’t gone back to revisit at home afterwards. I’m not sure your review changed my mind - how you described feeling about the Sacrifice Scene is how I felt about the whole film, unable to immerse myself because I could see every single filmmaking choice made far more clearly than the actual film. Even shooting at NIF in LLNL kiiiinda bugged me, partly due to the size of the actual reaction chamber being so small compared to how warp cores usually are shown, plus I just couldn’t stop seeing 1970s lasers anachronistically being in the 2250s… even if they’re meant to be antimatter injectors and coolant lines or something. But that’s because I was extremely familiar with NIF already, so it gave me the kind of “misplaced mundane object” reaction that most people got from the Budweiser scenes in “2009”. I presume anyone who didn’t already know NIF very well probably found it more than suitably technical and futuristic.
One of the theories was instead of him being Khan, he was meant to be Gary Mitchell from the TOS second pilot, it would’ve made sense as Kirk and Mitchell was close friends and for him to secretly work for section 31 might’ve been a better villain. Using Khan was a easy an option.
Agree with you about Gary Mitchell being a non-starter. Perhaps Khan was an attractive idea but if you don't nail the story execution...well here we are.
I think it would have worked better if Harrison just wasn't Khan. He could still be genetically enhanced and still involved in the Eugenics Wars, but the character's just not going to have the same impact in this timeline - old school fans will compare him to Montalban and the character has no meaning for newcomers. I think the thing to do would have been to keep the story as is (remove the direct references to Wrath - I really hated the "It's that KHAAAAN bit but this time it's Kirk do you see what we did there" bit) and then build up to the possibility of Khan in a future movie.
I think he still could be Khan, but that would envolve basically laying out a story that somehow explains that due to the change in the timeline Khan hadn't previously crossed paths with Kirk & Co. Even better idea would have been to make him Khan's right hand man hell bent on fulfilling Khan's vision/will after Khan was killed off (perhaps by other separatist Augments). That would have been a great plot twist. Everyone thinks he is Khan, until they reveal that Khan is long dead (maybe at the hands of the Nerada & Nero while he was waiting for Spock) and Cumberbatch is actually Joachim from Wrath of Khan just carrying out Khans dying wish. This would put it in line with events following the Augments trilogy in Enterprise with enough of a twist that it could be explained by Nero altering the timeline without diluting the story. It could have been explained as Marcus secretly leading Section 31 and building the Vengenace as a means of an end of possible future wars coming off the heals of the encounter with the borg enhanced Nerada and the Earth/Romulan war - essentially fast tracking Starfleets militarization that didn't occur until Wolf 359 in the prime timeline. Instead of Joachim hiding his people in torpedoes, perhaps he has a cloaked, heavily modified Klingon bird of prey or D7 (maybe a Romulan warbird) with them on board (like in the Augments) leading to a triple threat showdown between Joachim, the Enterprise and the Vengeance, in which Kirk and Joachim team up to take care of Admiral Marcus (whom for the sake of the story would have needed to commit some horrendous crime to unite Kirk & the Augments before Joachim turns on the Enterprise in a final battle. We could have had the Enterprise separate the saucer and had some epic battle, that advances character development, keeps the plot connected to unaltered past events while connecting to the effects Nero had on the timeline, all the while telling a new fresh story that lures fans in, throws the curveball of Joachim, gives fan homage and concludes with an epic space battle resulting in Kirk & Co. putting their timeline a bit more in synch with the Prime timeline while still maintaining their own contained timeline. Hell, maybe Marcus from the Kelvin timeline was actually from the Terran Empire (explains his focus on combat, war, killing) and the threat of the mirror universe is enough to unite Kirk & Joachim?? This would be a movie worth seeing in my opinion.
I know it’s off topic but Super8 seems to get a lot of hate as a paint by the numbers 80’s sci-fi flick but I personally really enjoyed the film. It’s one of Abram’s few films I actually like.
Binged your retrospectives a few weeks back and have been eagerly waiting this instalment. I remember in the cinema I was enjoying this up until Kirk went down to engineering near the end and I was like "oh they're not are they...oh, they are..." I still don't hate it, but it's not high ranking for me. I still wish they had done what I'd hoped, and had Cumberbatch just be John Harrison - there is no reason why Harrison couldn't have been a member of Khan's crew. Still an augment, still dangerous, and still useful for the Admiral. They could easily have come up with a reason why they awakened Harrison and not Khan. Would have been a neat take.
If John Harrison was maybe Khan's chief scientific advisor or military engineering specialist or something similar. Still superhumanly fast and strong, but it would help to explain why he was so good at designing weapons.
My biggest gripe about Into Darkness is the manufactured tension as the Enterprise spirals into the Earth out of control before the crew saves the day. Um.....like there's absolutely no other ships or assistance from Earth to keep the Enterprise from crashing? And the attack from the Vengeance between Earth and the moon goes completely unchallenged or even noticed by Earth? That's my pet peeve.
Cumberbatch's character would have better served the trilogy if he were Joachim, Khan's right-hand man, rather than Khan himself. And where would be Khan in all of this? Missing. When Starfleet/Section 31 finds the Botany Bay and its crew in stasis, Khan's sleeper tube is vacant. Someone (Nero possibly) awoke Khan many years earlier and set him loose in the galaxy. Joachim is awoken and told of this situation, and he agrees to provide his knowledge in order to secure assistance in finding where Khan has been all this time. We would get the sublime horror of wondering what Khan is planning as well as the chance to cast an older actor (relative to Kirk and company) with the gravitas to carry off the character of Khan.
Yeah, this movie is kinda messy. Also, Khan states that Starfleet found the Botany Bay while searching for a new homeworld for the last Vulcans, but Spock Prime had already located one so shouldn't he know about this?
It's been awhile since I've sat down and watched the Kelvin Timeline movies, not out of dislike necessarily, but they are not movies I tend to return to often, which pretty much describes my feelings towards all of JJ Abrams movies. Visually they are spectacular, the music is great, there is some funny dialogue, the action is cool and the acting is usually up to a high standard. The biggest reason they still lack re-watch value for me is that they don't quite scratch that itch in terms of what I want to see out of Star Trek content. ST is at it's best when it's using the sci-fi genre to make deep commentary on humanity, intimately explore fascinating characters, or present us with delightfully weird stories that wouldn't be possible to tell in any other format. This isn't to say there isn't SOME attempt at those things, especially in Into Darkness, but the pressures of having to conform to the action blockbuster format and the questionable understanding of the franchise from the creative team ultimately holds them back from being more than just fun diversions. I have warmed to Into Darkness over the years but it's still a movie I have trouble getting 100% behind on. I honestly think the first 2/3 of ID is enjoyable and interesting, but after they leave Qo'noS is were the plot begins to falter. The Khan twist was severely misguided on so many levels and the movie gets so bogged down in in-you-face references that it undercuts any emotional investment despite the efforts of the actors. The magic blood plot point and how the whole "imminent war with the Klingons" thread gets practically forgotten about by the end didn't help matters. I'm in the camp that actually really liked Benedict Cumberbatch performance, but I just wish they had given him an original character (or Gary Mitchell) to play. Having Cumberbatch play a version of Khan that is both physically and characteristically unrecognizable from the original was just a great disservice to both him and the fans. it's very much a 3.5/5 movie for me, far from the worst ST movie in my book but misses out of being one of the better entries.
Something that you didn't touch on was Abrams after thoughts on the film and insight into how the screenplay was really developed. In an interview with Buzzfeed two years after the film's release, Abrams addressed some of the film's shortcomings. He thought that the dynamic for Kirk and Spock's relationship in the film "wasn’t really clear." For keeping the identity of Khan a secret prior to the film's release, Abrams felt he "was trying to preserve the fun for the audience, and not just tell them something that the characters don’t learn for 45 minutes into the movie, so the audience wouldn’t be so ahead of it." In the end, Abrams recognized that "there were certain things I was unsure of.... Any movie...has a fundamental conversation happening during it. And [for Into Darkness,] I didn’t have it.... [The problems with the plot] was not anyone’s fault but mine, or, frankly, anyone’s problem but mine. [The script] was a little bit of a collection of scenes that were written by my friends.... And yet, I found myself frustrated by my choices, and unable to hang my hat on an undeniable thread of the main story. So then I found myself on that movie basically tap-dancing as well as I could to try and make the sequences as entertaining as possible.... I would never say that I don’t think that the movie ended up working. But I feel like it didn’t work as well as it could have had I made some better decisions before we started shooting.
In my headcanon, Cumberbatch did actually play Harrison, Khan's chief scientific advisor or military engineering specialist or something similar. Marcus thaws out a few of Khan's Krew first, including Harrison. In order to protect his beloved leader, Harrison agrees to come up with new weapons and tactics for Admiral Marcus, and takes on the mantle of Khan himself and disguises the real Khan's identity.
@@adamb503 It's the same thing that fans like myself started doing since 1979 to explain why, for example, the Klingons looked so different with no explanation.
@@LocalboyTNWhen he said "my name is khan!" Dun dun dummmm Spoke and Kirk should have shrugged and said, "who is that? We havnt had space seed in this timr line." Ridiculous script
tl;dr: When they get to Qo'Nos, the action is engaging, the VFX are lovely, the actors are good, and the music is excellent. It just makes no sense for those people to go to Qo'Nos. And it makes no sense for some of those people to be in this movie. And the consequences of the plot wouldn't even make sense to anybody with as many working brain cells as my long deceased great grandparents. It's an adequate excuse to eat some popcorn. Or maybe something to play in the background with the dialog turned off while chatting at a party. It's the kind of story that takes time to sink in. Days after you watch it, you'll be getting a snack at 3:00 AM, and another reason it's stupid will dawn on you.
A well researched and fairly presented piece. I've really been enjoying this series and I appreciate how balanced you were in discussing this film. That being said, it was centered on a film which features prominently in my Top-5 Worst Movies of All Time list, and is lightyears away from my next least-favourite outing in the Trek franchise.
Yeah, it's the same for me. I really don't like Nemesis but the films doesn't make me angry or anything - it's just a crappy attempt at making Star Trek. Whilst Into Darkness represents (in my opinion) the worst elements of modern film making.
@@Its__Good Yeah nemesis and final frontier might be bad in their own ways but as far as I'm concerned they at least get my respect for at least trying to do their own thing even if it didn't work. Into Darkness however feels worse to me because it's riding the coattails of a better movie.
@@moonbeans7042 that's the primary crux of my issue with the film. "You've masterfully reset the board to allow you to tell new stories with the same pieces. Why are you making the same moves as the last player did in their game?"
@@moonbeans7042 this. I can hate-watch the two you called out to laugh at them, but I’m not sure if I could do that with _Into Darkness._ The actual construction of the filmmaking was way too obvious to me and pulled me out of my willing suspension of disbelief.
If Wrath of Khan didn't exist, and this was a story we had never seen done before, I think we'd all find it very good ... but as it is, we end up with a clunky attempt to tell a legendary story in a different way. I enjoy it, but I'll never understand WHY they took this route ...
I didn't really care that he was Khan. I mean, I don't associate the character here with the TOS character. They're just too different. My issues are more about how set-piece-focused the script is. They have visual moments they want to hit, then they write a script that connects them: ENT rising out of the water, Khan fighting Klingons, Enterprise being shot up, Starship crashing into a city, Spock fighting Khan. How we get to these moments or why they exist storywise isn't that important. And there's little happening on an emotional level. That's why the Kirk death fails. Not because it's a reversal of the famous scene, but it fails because we don't know these versions of the characters. So we don't feel much of anything in the scene
If WoK didn’t exist, Cumberbatch going _”KHHAAAAAANNNN”_ would make precisely zero sense. It’s nonsense unless you understand the gravity behind the name.
If Wrath of Khan hadn’t been made, Into Darkness would be a fundamentally different movie. The entire finale is a riff on WOK, and I doubt this writing team would’ve come up with it on their own.
I think I have said this before, but I'll say it again. If I was a script doctor for the movie I would not have left Khan in it. I would have Marcus say that they were going to defrost the leader, Khan, but knew he would would be too dangerous and they weren't stupid. Instead, they went with the more benign Harrison who worked with regular humans before he went into deep freeze. Harrison would behave just as he did in the movie. This keeps Khan out of the movie and pushes up any sense of his dangerousness and...maybe use later if they really, really wanted to. The clumsy reveal of Khan is gone and Marcus' trust of the more friendly Harrison is shown to be misplaced. The death of Kirk and revival using magic blood would have to go and be replaced by something else. The idea that the doctor was experimenting with Harrison's blood during a battle is stupid and forced.
Abrams is like all of his type. He's an inept visionless director who uses flashy CGI in order to blind the audience from that fact, a' la George Lucas.
Also, he views the franchises he's given control of as a sandbox to play in, not a treasured history that people care about. He just wades in and does his own thing, with no thought to legacy or anything else. Consequently, he ruins everything he touches.
@@dentoncrimescene He had the original idea of doing an updated Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon clone, yes, but other than that he's proven himself to be pretty much clueless. Even ANH was ripped from things like Hidden Fortress, Where Eagles Dare, and 633 Squadron, with 30% of the finished script (i.e. all of the memorable lines) being written by ghost writers. His major redeeming quality is in business management, which I've found to be superb.
@@VinceLyle2161 You mean like the Sequel Trilogy? Yes, I can see that. If it were me I would have treated both franchises with ultra respect, and definitely wouldn't have mutilated them like Abrams did. Lucas had done enough damage to the Star Wars movies with the PT. Abrams though had a chance to almost start afresh, but instead what we got was truly dire.
They really could have had their cake and eaten it if they just made John Harrison one of Khan's fellow superhumans frozen aboard the SS Botany Bay. Benedict Cumberbatch is great in the role and very intense and threatening, but as you mentioned he just has no relation to Khan's previous portrayals. The only wrath of khan callback should have been the scene at the end where John Harrison is refrozen, except they pan over and you see Ricardo Montalbán frozen next to him. That would have been a nice way to pay homage to the wrath of khan whilst telling its own story.
“As part of the marketing efforts, Abrams’ trademark mystery-box secrecy made sure Kahn’s involvement in the story would be kept secret from the audiences until the movie was released.” Uh… I don’t know ANYone who didn’t call this one. Everyone knew this was Kahn before the movie came out. Just because the Hollywood-people didn’t explicitly say it was Kahn, doesn’t mean that the audience didn’t know.
Some people just avoid trailers and discussion before watching films. I generally do (I don’t see the point, usually all that happens is it spoils things) and didn’t know about Khanberbatch.
Since JJ is the director (rather than a mere actor like U-know-who) his repeated lies about KHAN is totally indefencible indeed. The public then was justifiably pissed off when JJ was revealed as a prevaricator.
I remember the discussions immediately following the release of '09, where would JJ take the franchise next? Lots of people figured it would be Khan, as the obvious subject for a director like Abrams, who's gone on record multiple times, he never liked Star Trek because it was too "philosophical". Low hanging fruit.
I remember thinking that John Harrison couldn't possibly be Kahn, because I thought that it would be such a terrible idea to even try to do Kahn, so why would he be. Naive little me.
I saw it in the IMAX on opening day, excited as all get out. I remember feeling like it was letting me down a bit during the first two acts of the film, but I managed to stick with it and try to enjoy it despite my creeping reservations. However... this was all well and good on my part.... until that death switch "remix" scene you pointed out. The second that Spock yelled "KHAAAAAN!", I instantly felt myself checking out of the rest of the film permanently. It was just way too on-the-nose fan service-y and from then on I just could not seem to care what else was happening. I have revisited the film since then, and unfortunately, the problems and nitpicks I initially had upon first viewing had only grown to the point wherein I just can't ever get into the film anymore in any way. Which is too bad because all of the positive aspects you pointed out in this excellent (as usual) retrospective are indeed great components to the film. But for me, it just ended up drowning itself in nonsensical plotting and extremely unsubtle nods to to TWOK. Anyway, I enjoyed this (as usual) and I greatly look forward to your retro vid on STAR TREK BEYOND, which is actually my fave of the 3 (thus far) Kelvin Timeline films. Cheers!
I love that Khan here is so lethally efficient, as probably all Augments tend to be in general. They’re meant to be super soldiers after all and thus I love that this film shows that not only is their intelligence superior but also their strength and their ability to fight. As the Augments were created in the capitalist time of World War III, I like to think that they were especially bred for that purpose by some private military company.
Thank you for this interesting take on WoK2. I think I'm in the camp of "old enough to have watched TOS, grew up with TNG, loved and then rediscovered VOY/DS9" that is still happy to have Star Trek content. I love the TOS reimagined movies because they create excitement for new generations. As a Trekkie, I like the continuity, and still can understand why some don't like this movie. I have some Trek shows I don't like, I hate Picard because of what they've done to a character I admired growing up, for example. Discovery I can't get into yet, though I tried and may go back to it soon. The Orville was fun to a point, and haven't watched Lower Decks yet. That being said, I'm a Trekkie and I think you're doing a fantastic job of providing a balanced/nuanced view of the series/movies.
Spock's death in The Wrath of Khan works because both the characters and actors are calling on twenty years of personal history. Kirk's death in Into Darkness was built on characters we barely knew, and actors who were far too young. The Deus Ex Machina ending was beyond parody. This film was an utter disaster from the very beginning of the script. They could have done literally anything, instead they chose to remake the best film in the franchise - something that not only was utterly pointless, but actually devalued the entire Kelvin timeline into something approaching the seriousness of Power Rangers. Not only that, it felt highly disrespectful to the original cast and then didn't even try to do justice to the material, replacing tension and the battle of will between Kirk and Khan by two super veteran actors in tight closed sets, with cgi nonsense action and belief killing evasion of logic. It was like watching a toddler trying to rebuild the golden gate bridge using stickle bricks. I remember sitting in the cinema in sheer disbelief that anyone could be so disrespectful of those that had gone before who were so clearly their betters, and I have yet to recover any respect for anyone involved. It was this movie alongside Indiana Jones 4 and Die Another Day which turned me from a movie lover into someone who would happily watch Hollywood burn. I despise every second of it.
Making a decidedly un-Star-Trek-like Star Trek film and catering to the nostalgia of Star Trek fans was destined to not go over well. People like Star Trek because it's _not_ dumb Chris Nolan action, but _because_ it's intelligently designed and adventurous fun. There are parts of this film I think work great, but as a whole, it was a bad idea.
I really enjoy these retrospectives. You do a very good job with them and thank you. I found that death scene with Kirk and Spock such a slap in the face that it basically ruined the movie for me. Up until that point this version of Kirk and Spock hand earned that particular scene. That’s why it was so good in the original, because we had that long-term ability to see those characters working together built as friends and the love they shared. I was baffled by the need to use Khan as well.
I personally enjoyed all three of the new Trek movies, but I do completely agree about the Kirk death scene, I am always distracted with the thought of it being a remix from the Wrath of Khan. Overall though, I would still rank this pretty decently in my rankings for Star Trek Films
This is my favourite star trek movie period. Really don’t get why people dislike it. I loved Benedict cumberbatch as khan, a really great and sinister performance, and that scene with Alice Eve, phwoar..
Star Trek Into Darkness was the very first star trek I've seen. I wasn't a fan and went to see this in theater with a couple of friends. Because of that I had nothing to compare this movie with and I liked the movie. After watching this only I watched Star Trek (2009) and soon after that I started watching TNG and it was followed by all the star trek available up to then. although I've only seen Into Darkness only once, I have a soft spot for it
I always took the fact that Khan reveal his name while haming it up because the guy was a Conqueror in the old times. Also the guy has an Ego so big it could crush a Borg Cube.
For the most part Star Trek Into Darkness is actually a pretty decent film, even with the Khan stuff, what really knocks it down is the last 30 mins of the movie where they tried too hard to play into the Wrath of Khan references. The film would have been so much stronger if they’d let the story stand on its own, let the film be its own thing. It’s as Abrams said, they could do anything they wanted, even with Khan they could have told a different and new story. I always said the story should have focused on Admiral Marcus as the main villain, not shift at the last minute to be a fight against Khan. If they had kept the focus on the themes of militarization, it would have made for a much more solid story. The last 30 some minutes was really unnecessary. I don’t think the inclusion of Khan in this story was the issue but rather how they utilized him. If they had just told a new story with Khan, it would have been much better. The Kelvin timeline was always at its best when it was doing its own thing instead of relying on the past, it shouldn’t be afraid to make its own path.
Funny thing, even though I didn't see Wrath of Khan before Into Darkness I knew enough about it to understand the moment of Kirk dying if radiations and Spock yelling Khan's name. But I also understood immediately how bad and lazy it was. I immediately HATED the movie at this moment because of it, it felt like poor nostalgia or poor fan-service to me, even more useless than live-action remakes by Disney (it was before everyone understood that nostalgia-driven movies were becoming a thing, before we coined the term "legacyquel"). I LOVE the sequel Star Trek Beyond mostlybecause it doesn't try to be nostalgic.
I was never able to come to terms with Cumberbatch playing Khan. Montalbán was so superb in the original role that it just didn't work for me. I can still enjoy the movie though, by simply accepting Cumberbatch as 'The Antagonist' in the story rather than Khan.
It's not just Khan, most scenes in the film lack apparent purpose. Same as the previous film, it seemed like the writing room was too many people, attempting to hit too many beats, maintain a constant cadence of action to keep the attention of the ADHD set, whilst also working backwards to rationalise certain ideas they perhaps should've given up on. It still boggles my mind how such messy, scatterbrained writing was ever greenlit, let alone successful.
This movie was my favorite of the trio, really showing why the temporal accords are a thing and what happens power grows without being checked by empathy or reason, something I always felt the reboot movie wanted to show but didn't really get across
I was disappointed that they never addressed how aliens and their biology might challenge the fundamental belief system that Khan bases his entire life around. He sees himself as superior to all others due to his physicality, yet Spock was his equal blow-for-blow.
I am not a fan of the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies, Benedict Cumberbatch was miscast as Kahn. I watch them but it is something about his style of directing that I am not a fan of.
Along with other problems, the way Kirk’s death is portrayed is simply absurd. To be specific, Spock’s reaction feels totally unearned and almost silly. Whether or not the scene is compared with Wrath of Khan in terms of performance, there simply hasn’t been enough time for these two characters to develop the bond that would justify Spock’s reaction. It looks completely ridiculous. I have zero problem with the idea of Spock loving Kirk and seeking justice for the death of his closest friend. But the scene is portrayed as if Kirk and Spock had been actual lovers for decades and Spock becomes a raging revenge monster. And let’s remember, Spock is Vulcan. Ripping his emotional control away once after the death of his mother was handled very carefully and with real thought put in to it. Here, it looks totally forced, overdone, and, well, like phony nonsense. At best, it’s a childish tantrum. At worst, like a 100% cynical attempt at audience manipulation. That, and the scene where Khan announces his name, pulled me completely from the film. I really liked most of the movie, but those two scenes, with the childish, unearned, third-grader drama bullshit, made it all just embarrassing.
using deus ex machina to literally cure death has to some of the worst writing in any movie period. I mean you literally just found a cure for death. Are you going to gloss that over and never speak of it again? The answer is yes haha.
@@purefoldnz3070, Yes. Ung, that was bizarre too. I suppose it was better than the next film being “Stat Trek: The Search for Kirk” to spare us more repetition but why not just, well, not have the damn scene in the first place?
I actually like Into Darkness, for what it is it's fun and there has definitely been far worse Star Trek, but it did make me chuckle when I saw it in the cinema where Kirk leaves Spock in command saying that he could trust Spock to keep a cool head and was the best to be in command what ever might happen to him, then in the span of like 2 scenes Spock proceeds to entirely lose his shit...
I loved this movie when it came out in theaters. The reveal of Khan midway through was a real shocker to me. I absolutely loved it. Then when you had the death scene between Spock and Kirk just like in ST:WoK but reversed, I just fell into tears! I walked out of the theater thinking this was one of the best Treks I'd ever seen. Now watching it 10 years on, it has dropped somewhat down the list of best Trek movies, but is still near the top. Up there with First Contact and Wrath of Khan.
I will say that Benedict Cumberbatch’s Khan is the first Star Trek villain that I feel to be genuinely threatening, an imposing figure with a booming voice and facial expressions that will haunt you dreams and while the performance tiptoes on the line of credible and sometimes crosses into cartoonish it isn’t for long enough to be a true detriment to the overall characterization.
They should have just cast a Sikh actor, called him Khan from the get go, and left out the weird callbacks. This movie would have been fucking great. It's insane to me that the reason they cast Khan as white is because they didn't want to make a person of color the bad guy. A strange, absurd excuse for whitewashing an important character that everyone loves.
No, it's not just that they didn't want a non-white villain (heck, Beyond had a black bad guy). It's just a consequence of this movie having arguably good themes, but trying to force an old plot into it. The film is an allegory for 9/11 and the War on Terror and having a brown-skinned terrorist as the villain could be seen as racist. If John Harrison stayed John Harrison or even Joachim then I guarantee the film would've worked much better.
@@YggdrasilAudio I think they should have stayed away from those themes to begin with. Besides, IMO Khan wasn't really the villain, Marcus was. Take out that BS at the end with the city being destroyed and make Khan what he should be, the story works IMO.
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Into Darkness is one of the better Trek movies, and it's truer to Trek than WroKh and FC. Though I have some issues with it. They should have discovered the area on Kronos they were going to bomb is inhabited. They chickened out on this, but it's implied by the patrol ship. They could have wrapped up the Spock subplot and set up the Khan Augment blood thing (which fits with Ent) a little better, but these are small issues.
They could have the effects of Khan blood cells on Kirk be a subplot in 4. Maybe this is part of why he acts different in Beyond. Maybe Kirk will become more like Picard in this timeline.
The main problem with ALL Jar Jar Abrams' ST movies is that they include the orginal characters. Why this "creative genius" can't create a new, orginal and fesh story instead of recycling the well known characters. Why do they have violate characters and events we know. Jar Jar Abrams as a destructor of movies.
13:29 “Peter Weller has so much gravitas he can pull satellites out of orbit”
I absolutely love this quote LOL
They should make a Robocop 4, have Weller reprise his role & the plot be about satellites falling to earth because of his presence.
"How-- did you do that?"
"Simple. See this satellite? It's solid matter. But the solid parts-- the protons, neutrons, and quarks of this satellite only constitute one _quadrillionth_ of its total volume!"
@@BogeyTheBear this quote is familiar, but can’t quite put my finger on it. Can you tell me the source, please?
It's from _The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension_
One thing that really bugged me is that the Enterprise just wandered up to Qo'nos and had no defences whatsoever. One should not simply arrive at the heart of the Klingons Empire with absolutely no resistance from a proud warrior species.
Agree, and they got there in 2 minutes 🤣
One does not simply warp into Klingon Space...
There's literally a fan made episode that shows how dangerous and difficult this journey should be. The ease in this is stupid.
@@bull705 it was also a major element of The Undiscovered Country
That has never occurred to me until now, but WOW, you’re right. This is a culture with cloaking tech, so yeah, this should be way harder
The promotion of this film was so funny because of the fan reaction. "Benedict Cumberbatch as John Harris!" Fans: "You mean as Khan." Studio: "NoooOOoooO!!! Not Khan! Really really not Khan!" Fans: "Right. Sure. It's Khan." :-) So much so that when the reveal finally came for sure, the reaction seemed to mostly be eye-rolling.
Exactly. It wasn’t so much that Khan was in the movie, it was the fact that this was an obvious “parallel” re-hash of Star Trek II, and fans saw straight through the whole John Harrison thing right away.
But instead of either owning up to it or not responding to it, JJ himself repeatedly lied about it by insisting that Harrison wasn’t Khan and that Khan wasn’t in the movie. So, as is said in the video, the “reveal” falls flat and is irritating more than anything.
Reminds me of the Arkham Knight
Better than spoiling a movies plot in trailers which the last few Terminator films did.I respect Abrams and co. Trying to keep the plot secret.
@@Chopperwocky Hey, by all means, don't go blabbing the plot in interviews or trailers. You don't even have to confirm when people guess. But lying just makes you look stupid when the truth comes out
I think the smart thing to do would have been to say "we're not remaking wrath of khan" and then remake Space Seed
I started rewatching Star Trek in chronological order a year and a half ago and I am almost finishing Voyager, I must say that discovering your channel and exploring your videos is making this journey a complete pleasure!
Good job! Can't wait for more videos!
welcome to the ice-berg that is Trek. Don't let the elitists and nay-sayers demoralize you. All Star-Trek has it's merits.
@@adam346 *rewatching 🤣
@@ludabalkanska2890 lol
I've always felt that Khan should have actually been a new character named John Harrison, one of Khan's followers, thawed because he had a specific knack for hand to hand combat and weapons design. It would have given a great opportunity to see Ricardo Montalban frozen in one of the cryotorpedos
also I freaking HATE this movie
My thoughts about Harrison are the same. I would have Marcus say specifically that they almost thawed out the leader, Khan, but knew he was too dangerous. They went instead with the more benign and willing-to-compromise fella named Harrison. Then surprise, he causes trouble because he still thinks he is a "superior being' and the rest of his scenes basically stay the same. He is just as bad as Khan could be under the same situation.
I agree that Khan is the biggest problem with this film. Either commit completely and use his name from the start, or just keep him as one of the Augments. In other words, if he was John Harrison throughout the film, it really doesn't change anything. If you must, have a post-credit scene showing one of the stasis pods with the name "Khan" on the side. Then again, I would argue that they should have gone in a completely different direction with a new villain.
Yep. Could have even had a fake-out with Harrison pretending to be Khan the whole movie and it gets revealed to the audience at the end (not the characters) by panning over the cryo freezers and seeing Ricardo Montalbán's likeness through the glass as the movie fades out. This would leave the potential for the 'real Khan' to wake up some day, and leave viewers to speculate on Harrison's motivations for pretending to be someone else.
@@andromidius it would even have been cool if they had made the name "khan" sort of an "i am spartacus" thing, where any escaped augment takes on the title until the true khan is restored.
you could even have written in that adm. marcus already had the real khan executed in his tube for being too dangerous and unthawed john harrison with the promise that khan would eventually be restored, but harrison learns the truth triggering his violent rebellion and effort to save the rest of the augments while keeping the title.
thats just a "top of my head" idea, but in any case it would have taken very little effort to improve the story
OR they could’ve used Khan’s original incarnation, Harold Ericsson.
Solid review. Your take mirrors my own.
I would point like to point out that the creators failed in one of their stated goals: This Khan is not Kirk's archnemesis. In fact, Kirk never defeats him. Spock does. Twice. First, Spock tricks him with the torpedoes. Then Spock beats him in the hand-to-hand fight. They took Kirks most iconic nemesis and put all the focus on Spock... again.
One of the problems with the two JJ movies is that he's clearly in love with Spock, and the narrative focus remains on him for both movies. Sure, Kirk is going a character plot, but its always tied to Spock, and Spock's resolution takes precedence over his own. Combine that with the incredibly immature take on Kirk for two straight films, and it's kind of grating. Fortunately the next movie finally let us see a more mature take on the character.
This one's easily my least favourite of the Kelvin movies, it starts off OK but really falls apart towards the end for me. As others have said, having Khan in this wasn't needed and was just asking for trouble, if he was just John Harrison and not Khan in disguise it probably would've been better, and just going from being loosely inspired by TWoK to direct line lifting was disappointing to say the least. As great as he is, I didn't really buy Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan (probably why it would've worked better as John Harrison for me), personally I'd have loved to have seen Faran Tahir in the role if they absolutely had to go with the character, but obviously he was already Captain Robau in the previous entry so that would've just been confusing. If only...
I just couldn't get into it, for a range of reasons. Bummer, but only seen it once, so might try again sometime.
Yeah I couldn't take Cumberbatch seriously as Khan. If it had been somebody else in the role it MIGHT have worked. I always used to despise this movie and Tried multiple times to force myself to like it and always felt annoyed and frustrated. Anyway I watched it the other night after getting the 4K boxset and I was surprised that I found myself really enjoying it and getting invested in the story. Still amazed
I came out of the theatre scratching my head… I have a lot of issues with Into Darkness but a number of them could have been solved by making Cumberbatch’s character Joachim instead of Khan.
- He looks like the actor who originally played him.
- It’s a character that you can play with as we only know that he’s fiercely loyal to Khan and is good at learning future tech.
- If you kill him it gives Khan an incentive to bring his wrath in the next movie.
Why oh why was Cumberbatch playing Khan?
Javier bardem should've played khan
@@lenk8374 shouldn't have been no fucking Khan anyways.
Yeah, the character that Cumberbatch plays is a menacing villain, he's just not Khan. Making him one of the other augments would have totally solved that.
Nestor Carbonell was my first pick for it
Monsieur Gauthier, _you_ are a genius. Someone else here thought that he was General Chang the Klingon (in altered by surgery disguise) what with all the connections leading up to the reveal. _Both_ these ideas are better than Cumberbatch as Khan & Khan's use here.
I sincerely thought for quite a bit of the movie that Cumberbatch's character was going to actually end up being General Chang trying to instigate a war. I think seeing an exploded Praxis gave me that impression, his character hiding on Qonos, Cumberbatch also seemed to be tapping into some of Plummer's other performances. Honestly would have been a better twist, and despite how popular Khan is as a villain General Chang was always a better foil for Kirk because of their similar backgrounds. They could have even tied the death of Chang's father to Nero's attack on the Klingon fleet from the first movie to tie Kirk and Chang together even more.
Sadly this movie really just doesn't do it for me. It kind of left a bad taste in my mouth that made me disinterested in any sequels. I don't want to dismiss all the hard work and effort that clearly went into making this movie, but there is a general feeling of an extremely cynical motivation hovering over the entire film. Despite its shortcomings and carrying the negative baggage of this movie, Beyond ended up being a huge improvement over this one at least.
Damn, that’s a much better idea. With Weller having the role akin to Admiral Joe Sisko, I mean Cartwright, and General Odo (I never saw the director’s cut so I don’t actually know his character’s real name). Even though it’s a different timeline it makes sense that those military tensions would still exist.
@@kaitlyn__L Yeah the tensions between them would still exist, possibly delayed to a later point in the Kelvin timeline because Nero destroyed a Klingon fleet in the first movie. In order to rebuild their fleet they could have mined Praxis even faster and more recklessly, which is why it's destroyed so much earlier in the timeline in this movie. Cumberbatch would be a really good actor to play a young Chang as well. Oh well, missed opportunities which about sums up how I feel about this movie and the 2009 one.
One of my least favourite Star Trek films for most of the reasons mentioned. One of the biggest issues I had was the Vengeance. It was ridiculously oversized and over powered, and turned the Enterprise into a punching bag. I would presume it would be derived from the same technological base as Star Fleets top of the line Enterprise and would have just been a bit bigger and more heavily armed ship. This is more like the CIA secretly constructing an aircraft carrier ten times the size of anything else in the US fleet.
There was a model of Vengeance in the Admiral’s office in the first 5 minutes. Like, it was in the foreground of the shot. Totally ruined the surprise for me (new ship model + mention of Jupiter = duh). Who was this ship a secret from? Not the engineers or bean counters or _cleaning staff_ , that’s for sure.
@@vysharra It's a secret in the same way that Cumberbatch playing Khan was a secret. 🎶"Everybody knows..."🎶
Seeing how Starkiller Base was basically a bigger Deathstar, it pretty much matches up with JJ’s MO.
As I remember the idea was stolen from an 80s novel by Diane Carey called Dreadnought! Much better written, of course. No augments, just a paranoid admiral with a pathetic paranoia of Klingons.
I believe most of those novels are at least summarized on Memory Alpha.
I remember being in the theater just kind of bored through most of this one. I'm not even a huge fan (watched TOS and TNG growing up) but I was rolling my eyes at all the WoK references. It felt like they leaned too heavily on what came before, and didn't even do a great job of it, rather than making a quality original Star Trek movie.
Same, the call backs were nauseating, and the rest was mostly uninteresting. Spock yelling Khan was like they were purposefully trying to kill the series. Just makes it seem totally out of ideas.
I’ve never really watched the TV series but I love the good movies. This wasn’t one of them.
The "nonsensical" reveal makes perfect sense if one understands that Khan knows he is in a movie and has read the script.
This is a pretty common failing of a lot of modern entertainment. For example, it made The CW's Flash series unwatchable to me.
Also that the "secret" was pretty much universally figured out before the movie was even released.
I feel like reworking WNMHGB (like some websites theorised based on Cumberbatch and Eve’s similarity in appearance to key characters from that pilot) into a modern action story with deeper morality-wrestling (amp up Kirk‘s inner turmoil, amp up Spock’s insistence he be killed before terrible things happen, have far more terrible things happen, go places subsequent similar Trek stories didn’t) would’ve still been better… of course an entirely original story would have been best.
I feel like reworking WNMHGB (like some websites theorised based on Cumberbatch and Eve’s similarity in appearance to key characters from that pilot) into a modern action story with deeper morality-wrestling (amp up Kirk‘s inner turmoil, amp up Spock’s insistence he be killed before terrible things happen, have far more terrible things happen, go places subsequent similar Trek stories didn’t) would’ve still been better… of course an entirely original story would have been best.
All the CW series are unwatchable lol
this is not common in modern entertainment at all. Watch more movies than just corporate IP flicks
I became disenchanted with this one not long after it came out. Exactly as the video states, it's down to the script and the careless breaking of necessary limits on the power of certain technologies. And it make me think that JJ and his team simply don't know or worse, don't care.
However...
As the video states, everything else is so well done that it remains watchable on a surface level for the visuals and music alone.
Could say the same thing for star wars I guess. That would be a separate discussion but still true.
@@joeandrew8752 Agreed. I know now that things set up in The Force Awakens went nowhere, or the payoff was terrible -- and it started the trend of "bigger explosions, bigger ships" etc. But it remains a very entertaining film if you don't think too hard about it.
they don't care. in hindsight Abrams is a hack.
JJ doesn't care he just wants things the way he wants them to be , the effect on canon or lore is somebody else's problem and can be dealt with in a comic .
@@gavinblackburn3105 which is exactly what happened.
Benedict Cumberbatch owned the 2010’s man…dude was every over the top sci-fi/fantasy villain and it was worth it!
I remember walking out of the theatre with the two friends I'd gone to see Into Darkness with, and all three of us were wondering why they'd remade Wrath of Khan because there were soooo many callbacks to that previous, and very successful, film. At times it felt like Orci, Kurtzman, Abrams, Lindeloff, and Burke opened the Star Trek Encyclopedia or went on Memory Alpha and found a bunch of references and just threw them into the movie. Which, isn't necessarily a bad thing, if it's done with a certain amount of care and caution.
I had a similar experience, feeling bothered they redid TWOK but worse. I had thought perhaps those unfamiliar with the original might have appreciated it more with not being distracted by the references, but my girlfriend at the time who filled those criteria actually could tell they were references and so just found it even MORE distracting and frustrating than I did.
@@kaitlyn__L That's the thing, people are smart. So even if they hadn't seen Wrath of Khan when they went to see Into Darkness, they'd understand there are references to Wrath of Khan in Into Darkness. For some it probably didn't bother them, but for others it bugged them.
@@tgif1345 nail, head :)
@@tgif1345
No. A person is smart.
"PEOPLE are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it"
This may be my favourite Retroreview you done thus far. In a way I actually like the ones you've made for bad/controversial Star Trek entries more than the acclaimed ones, because you're very meticulous in describing both how and why the movie fails, but also how it came to be made that way, exploring the reasoning of the creators. You're also very fair, judging the big picture instead of focusing on just small elements (which is an issue I see in many modern UA-cam reviews as a result of the popularity of video essays).
The big picture vs small elements is a great example of why we either ignore or don't notice flaws in "good" movies, but amplify those flaws in a "bad" movie. There are flaws, plot holes, etc. in every movie. However, when a movie is "bad", we take the time to focus on all those little things that bugged us to justify why we believe the movie is "bad". Whereas, with a good movie, we can acknowledge that something is dumb or a plot hole and yet shrug it off because the movie was "good". Whereas those same problems if the movie were "bad" would be shouted from the rooftops as a reason the movie was "bad".
Perusing the comments, I came to the realisation that the main issue against "Darkness" was not the ethnic background of Khan (the actor for the original iteration is not of South Asian heritage, either) but rather that there was no build-up the the reveal of the purportedly central villain; whereas TWOK (1982) did not need prior background scene(s) this entry needed to have at least flashback scenes, to tell the casual viewer of origin and motivation of Khan. Lazy story construction indeed!
That Harrison is Khan does not matter to the story. His origin does not matter either, either as Harrison or Khan. His motivation is explained well enough in the movie itself.
Khan and crew are white in WroKh.
@@magnum3.14
But that doesn't even matter.
His motivation is stated as he wants to get his people back.
Nothing he does actually forwards that motivation in any way whatsoever.
In fact, his actions should have only guarenteed the death of his people. It was only " because the plot says so" that it did not.
He turned on the people who had his people with no apparent plan to deal with the aftermath of his efforts to kill them when it failed. He tried one half assed attempt to kill the Admiral and then fled to Qronos , where he could do nothing to extract them, and it was only by sheer plot contrivance that the admiral put his people in those ridiculous torpedoes and sent them right to the planet that the guy that wanted them back was on. Only the stupidity of his opponents and " plot" allowed them to survive.
In any sanely written movie the admiral would have sent word to Khan that his people had been scattered to a dozen covert locations and that if he did not turn himself in in 24 hours they would be eliminated one by one and that if anything befell the admiral then they would all be eliminated at once. The admiral was willing to start a war with the Klingons, he surely would not balk at killing a few dozen peolecicles to try to get Khan .
@@daverobson3084 I say you make it too easy for your argument by saying it should have guaranteed the death of his people and that it was only plot convinience.
It was my impression that only Harrison knew the people are in the Torpedos, and Admiral Marcus did not. So Harrison at the end was the one who knew how the Torpedos would act. And he knew that Marcus wanted to wage a war. So he gave Marcus a reason to wage the war now at his location, betting on him using the Torpedos. He gave Marcus the alibi to do what he wanted to do, and bet on Marcus doing that. Good enough for me.
We don't know what Harrison would have done, had Marcus not tried to intercept him. Harrison already came close to the Torpedos, and had started dialogue with the crew.
@@magnum3.14
That makes...no sense.
Admiral Marcus only had control of Khan because he had his people. Admiral Marcus had the torpedoes.
Even if Khan knew the torpedoes contained his people and Marcus did not , there was zero reason to believe that anyone would send all 72 of them to take out one man. Even if they did then his expectation should have been his people all die in glorious explosions , along with him, and the start of a Starfleet v Klingon empire war . He had no reason to expect that Kirk, or whoever else would have been sent, would not have followed orders and blasted him to dust in a moment, giving hi no opportunity to free his people. Hell. he didn't even take the time he had to hide from possible retribution, staying exactly where he had teleported to( since when can Starfleet tech track teleportation across a galaxy anyway?????)
No. That really doesn't help Khan's case at all. He gains nothing. His people all die. He dies. War starts. Marcus gets everything he wanted. Khan gets nothing he wanted. Kirk , and all on board, become war criminals.
The worst callback for me was Spock shouting KHAAANNN after Kirk's death. The scene was genuinely emotional, but the timing and delivery of that scream just completely ruined it. I remember being in theaters with my family and we all just burst out laughing.
Also, I will never understand why this film took Carol Marcus, a brilliant scientist whose greatest fear was Starfleet using her invention as a weapon, and turned her into... a Starfleet weapons expert.
I'm with you on this one. Not a terrible movie, but definitely messy. Excellent work as always.
Yeah, we all loved it, too!❤
The issue with Carol Marcus could have worked if the reason she (really David) was so fearful was because of her experience making weapons for Starfleet. She could be a sort of Nobel figure that regretted making weapons in the past and now wanted to make something that helped people. Though ironically in doing so created one of, if not, the most powerful weapons in all of history. Make a small scene at the end of the movie with her saying she can't do this anymore or something.
I just thought about how interesting it would be to see John de Lancie in the background scene of the Kelvin movies. Ideally he would be playing in a mariachi band at a bar Kirk is walking into. It would be even funnier to watch the production team and cast asked in interviews if they put Q in the Kelvin movie and have them just pretend like de Lancie isn't in the movie
One or two scenes set at the end of the Eugenics Wars as the walls were closing in on Khan would have helped the movie by setting up the reveal. One scene of Peter Weller discovering the Botany Bay would have helped, too. They wouldn't have to mention any names, just Weller taking one look at Khan in his suspended animation chamber and saying, "wake this one up."
It would still be a dumb movie full of cringey moments, but at least one payoff would be earned.
Also: enough with the spacing crewmembers scenes. I get that it's a bloodless but horrible death, but Star Trek went 40 years without gratuitous spacing. The camera can look away from that. Reaction shots of crewmembers can get that across. You do have actors in this movie, after all.
> by setting up
Sorry, but JJ doesn't do "setting up", he seems begrudged to even give the audience establishing shots.
I'm loving these retrospectives, I first watched Star Trek NG, odd episodes anyway, along with Voyager and Enterprise when my Dad rewatched them, and the JJ Abram movies were on my agenda as a kid. I remember liking Into Darkness, but I cant say it was very memorable
One reason I love your retrospective is how even handed you are, as well as not being prone to reactionary vitriol. That being said, I had a far more negative reaction to the weaknesses of this film. This one leaned too heavily on nostalgia, and was just a bit much for me in that regards.
I still think if they were going to do Kahn, either just do a feature length version of their first meeting - perhaps using Kahn's charismatic, devil-may-care attitude to mirror Kirk's flaws - or keep the Kahn manipulations, but have him personally behind the darkness spreading through the Federation. I don't know, the script was so sloppy, just anything else would have helped.
“Star Trek Into Darkness is still pretty good, but it should have been great.”
What a great take. I really appreciate the way you don’t give in to the downward spiral of fandom backlash and hyperbole, and present a more reasoned point of view.
I just want to thankyou for doing this series. It always brings a smile to my face when I see you've done another retrospective video. Thankyou!
14:05 This is one of the few things i actually disagree with. Kahn was a warlord during the ugenics wars of the late 20th century according to the Original series and the crew of that show actually had records of him and knew who he was. Tge deliverey here makes sense in my mind. Kirk not knowing who he is is actually what confuses me.
I also disagree with Rowan for once in that regard, but you seem to forget that Kirk does recognize Khan. After the reveal he goes: "Why would Marcus need help from a 300 year old frozen man?"
@404 TV ....yeah, he is a well known infamous name in history, what's your argument? We today know who Genghis Khan was and we are much further removed from him.
In this timeline Kirk skipped from 6th grade to Star Fleet Academy and so he missed the history class that covered the eugenics war.
I am one of those hardcore Star Trek fans that HATES this movie. As Rowan points out, there are things to like about this movie, but for me, they are overwhelmed by 1)Bringing Khan back poorly 2) Changing his motivation drastically 3) Changing his ethnicity 4) Changing who dies between Kirk and Spock 5) The VERY lame reveal of Khan 6) Spock not being a Vulcan, but a petulant angry man-child. J.J. said it himself, they could have made up someone new, instead of going to Khan. But they (Abrams and his crew) were lazy, disrespectful, and arrogant, much like Pine's Kirk.
as soon as it was leaked it might be Khans the movie was doomed. that box office it likely do normies not paying attention. I owuld like to see how much it dropped
I hated [the love interest] the most. It’s like Zoe was too big of an actress to bully into showing her underwear again, so they hired someone new whose only purpose was to get mostly nekkid. Star Trek isn’t perfect but it always tries to be a few steps ahead, this insistence on tickling nerdy peepees in the middle of a dramatic action movie was so gross and unnecessary, it was a clear step backward and such an obvious ploy that this video doesn’t even mention her once and nothing of value was lost.
(Not to knock the actress, she did great for what she was given, I hated the knee scene she did it so well, but her character shouldn’t have been written that way in the first place)
I am with you. While the 2009 movie showed a lot of promise, this movie simply sucked. And the next one was just monumentally stupid.
Agree on all except 4. With as much parallel universe concepts as there are in Trek-like “All Good Things”-I don’t see it as foreordained that any one bridgecrew is preordained to die in an exchange between Kirk and Khan.
Yeah. Pine's Kirk is a smirking jackass. Can't stand him in the first two Kelvin movies, though I lose most of my hatred as the character matured significantly in #3( even if the plot of that movie is just as dumb as Into Darkness).
I also could not stand the sheer stupidity of the admiral and of Khan's actions. Nothing Khan did actually should have forwarded his goal of retrieving his people, but should have instead guaranteed their deaths. It was only because the writers decided that the admiral needed to be some mustache twirling villain, instead of an intelligent adversary for Khan that that did not happen.
Any sane writing would have had the admiral secrete the frozen followers of Khan on a dozen different planets and sent Khan a message telling him that they would begin eliminating his people , one every hour, if he did not turn himself in in the next 24 hours, and that any attempt on the admirals life would result in the immediate death of all of his people and a nonstop manhunt for Khan.
Here's the thing about the Kelvin movies for me: for one, ST2009 *was* truly a good movie. I had to go see it two days in a row just to process it because they were shoving so much information at me, I was on overload the first viewing. But the other two films to date, I really enjoy them the first time out, but when I see them again on DVD and now digital, I start to see the flaws of the movies, and the same thing could be said of the first 2 Star Wars reunion trilogy movies (I honestly couldn't have given a rat's azz about Rise by the time that came out). Common denominator: J.J. Abrams.
"ST2009 was truly a good movie. "
Really. It wasn't.
It was a hack job on the OT with a single character trait( or, imagined trait) taken from the OT characters and turned up to 11.
What. Kirk is a maverick who sometimes broke the rules when it really needed to be done, and a ladies man in the OT( he really wasn't much of either of those, but he has the reputation).
Now he's a smirking, smart ass, rule breaking, womanizer who does whatever the hell he wants, whenever the hell he wants (while smirking smirkingly).
Spock showed occasional issues reconciling his human and Vulcan sides and dealing with emotion?
Now he's a screaming , crying mess who flies off the handle at the slightest provocation and gets into fist fights because someone insults his mother.
Ohura was a romantic?
Now she's a relationship obsessed annoyance.
Scotty was Scotty. Now he's uber Scotty.
And the writing. Oh my, the writing.
The federation is supposed to be a professional, civilized, exploration organization.
Then how come they seem to act like 17th century pirates.
When Kirk caused his first bout of trouble, any sane reaction by Spock would be to relieve him of duty( wait. I forgot. he didn't have any duties. He had quit Star Fleet and was a stowaway on this ship) and sent him to the brig.
What DID he do?
Stranded him on a desolate planet where chances are he would be dead in the next 5 hours.
Then, when Kirk uses some miracle transporting tech ( which seems to work only when it is convenient for the plot) to get back on the ship , and he goads the acting commander into a physical altercation is he then sent to the brig( or returned to the death planet)?
Nope.
HE IS PLACED IN COMMAND. Shooting right past those who hold a higher rank than him, which is everyone on board as HE QUIT STARFLEET!!!!!
Yes! This is why I love Sundays! Thanks for the upload Rowan!
I watched the Kelvin movies maybe 3-5 times each, and I still can't recall anything about their plots...that sums up my feelings towards them
pew pew pew hit the NOS!
As always, thank you so much for these, Rowan! Was quite enjoyable. ^_^
Absolutely brilliant mate, great entry as ever!
These are great to look forward to look forward to and rewatch 😀
A well balanced review for a Star Trek film many find controversial. Great content and conclusion.
My biggest issue with Khan's presence in Into Darkness is that the exact same plot could have worked just as well, if not better, WITHOUT Khan in it.
Khan's presence was always going to cause issues. Longtime Trek fans (myself included) would be very difficult to win over, no matter who they cast in the role, and new viewers wouldn't necessarily care at all about such an old name.
Ever since I watched Into Darkness for the first time in theatres, I've had the opinion that "John Harrison" should not have been revealed to be Khan, but instead, one of Khan's old disciples (Joachim, maybe?). The writers get to have the exact same plot, but without the risk of audience pushback against Khan's recasting and personality shift. Longtime fans are still hyped, because Augments / the Botany Bay / the Khan connection, and new viewers get an interesting new villain who doesn't have or need quite as much backstory knowledge.
And if they really wanted to, they could still include a post-credits scene (were those common yet in 2013?) to tease that Khan is still out there somewhere, sleeping... waiting.
Haha I've basically just written the same thing. John Harrison could have just been a member of Khan's crew - in this universe they just woke up a different person.
@@theredheadproject Or just avoid the Augment plot altogether since TWOK did it. Cumberbatch would have been better suited for a robotic 'Brainac-esque' villain. Perhaps the last remnant of a now dead civilianization, tasked with bringing that species back.
@@theredheadproject Yes, exactly! And as you mentioned in your other comment, there are plenty of in-universe easily justifiable reasons why they could have chosen to wake up one of Khan's crew, instead of the man himself.
@@NX232 Totally - I may not be remembering correctly, but in Space Seed I don't think they realised that it was Khan they'd woken up until they'd done it? So it could have been anyone on his ship.
Add to that the unfortunate implications of "whitewashing" Khan, who originally was supposed to be from India.
The thing about Wrath of Khan is that Khan had great motivation to harm Kirk. Khan's family died because the federation or more precisely Kirk, dumped them on a planet and didn't come back to check on them, he's perfectly right to be angry, his family are dead because they were left with no means to cope with a natural disaster and the federation didn't take responsibility for their previous actions. Kirk however thought he was taking the most compassionate route to dealing with a problem as oppposed to lifelong imprisonment so they both think they're the good guys in this and there's some empathy on both sides for the audience. In this film they're literally strangers, Kirk is just in Khans way but Khan could have been anybody.
Also, the notion of killing Kirk really annoyed me as it just didn't carry any resonance whatsoever compared to Spocks death. Star Trek had enjoyed three series on TV with minor success then one big movie in an era when TV shows just didn't jump onto television let alone shows with cult following only. The motion picture hadn't done brilliantly compared to Star Wars and Nimmoy had spoken openly about being tired of being typecast as Spock even calling his 1975 autobiography "I Am Not Spock". The idea of cinematic franchises was a long way off in 82 and the 80's infection of endless sequels hadn't quite kicked in so the idea that Star Trek would even get a second film was surprising and it was entirely believeable that it would be the last one, with Nimmoys open displeasure at playing Spock it was entirely believable that Spock death was for real, that this was how the story of Star Trek would end, 3 series, 2 movies, that's it, so long and thanks for all the fish. It had real weight.
Modern audiences live with franchises and trilogies and bearing in mind we've *just* relaunched this franchise with the previous movie there wasn't a hope in hell they would kill off the central character in just the second movie, you knew he wasn't going to die and the fact they brought him back to life within 10 minutes just weakened it even more. The reason death hurts is because of it's finality, if it is to mean anything in a fictional world it must have lasting repercussions, if you're going to kill people and bring then straight back to life then just don't bother.
You've hit the nail on the proverbial, there!
All the while JJ was winking at/mooning the audience with that role reversal "Khaaan" scene.
Abrams going: "see what I did there? Aren't I clever? I do get Star Trek, I know what you all want. Bet you didn't see that one coming a mile away? I'm so smart!"
Infuriating, doubly so, when there was no reason for it.
In Wrath of Khan, out of the entire crew, only Spock could endure the radiation long enough to fix the core matrix.
Here, all it takes Kirk, is to kick it a few times. Something absolutely anyone out of a crew of 500 could have done instead.
I love the scene where we see Zoe Saldana practicing her Klingon and the Klingon behind her nodding in approval. Because obviously he knows the correct pronunciation!
The whole "Kirk needs to be less arrogant" lesson is a good example of why they should never have been promoted from Cadet to Captain in the first place (though that's the fault of the first movie rather than this one). And it doesn't stick because Kirk wins in the end anyway, without experiencing the defeat that Kirk suffers (with Spock's death) in the original. Even his dying seems to be only a minor setback!
Yeah, it's almost like there's a purpose to spending time in your career as an Ensign, Lieutenant and then Commander before being responsible for every single life on a ship as its Captain
You neglected to mention that Khan being in the movie played by Cumberbatch was one of Hollywood’s worst kept secrets at the time. UA-cam shows like MovieTalk frequently referenced that it was going to be revealed to be Khan and questioned why they even wanted to keep that a secret in the marketing.
You certainly have a singular talent for polishing a turd. A very good retrospective, in spite of my disagreement with the conclusions. As with 2009, the only thing I enjoyed about this film was the excellent score. Watching this film just broke my heart. I tried to be open minded, I really did. But how can I enjoy a film when my heart is aching so much the entire time? Give me Star Trek V over this any day.
Mythbusters proved that the easiest turds to polish were those of carnivores. Everything else just falls apart. I guess this means Abrams and Co are either vegans or vegetarians.
agree, because this guy isn't a Trekkie he doesn't understand or value Kirk, Spock & McCoy
As far as JJ Abrams is concerned, it seems like with virtually all of the projects he has worked on he comes out of the gate with some decent ideas and flashy visual effects, but never has a solid, complete story arc. He showed promise with Alias, Lost, ST and SW. They all started pretty well, but just lost their way.
Star Wars is the first time JJ ever wrote a finale of a series
Mind you, he's _never_ opened that Mystery Box... he has never finished his own favorite story.
The warning signs were there.
he's an arrogant narcissist
What kinda stings about this movie is the core plot is actually a truly great ST story - the innate tension between militarism and optimism is a solid premise for a ST movie; especially in the Kelvin timeline. It's just frustrating the movie doesn't properly explain the eugenics wars so the core thematic/philosophical tension of the movie never come to a head like it should.
Also I agree; this movie has the best Klingon designs by far.
absoluely NOT
I can't wait for your Beyond retrospective. It easily in my top 3 of favorite star trek movies and my favorite of the Kelvin movies
Might be my favorite Trek movie.
Another one where I disagreed with your stated overall impression but agreed with every actual critical point! I’m just one of those people who couldn’t really find space in my brain to enjoy it given the plotting had all those problems, and the Khan stuff was distracting.
But redoing and inverting TWOK’s wending made my impressions leaving the film far more negative than it had been throughout most of it. I even actually pulled up the original Spock Sacrifice scene on UA-cam on my phone as a palette cleanser, standing outside the cinema entrance.
I absolutely agree the VFX are amazing, I basically enjoyed all the Scotty stuff, and the score was brilliant. I just couldn’t get over all the story problems to actually appreciate the eye candy. What’s most frustrating is the story has a lot of elements I like, such as Scotty refusing to allow Admiralty to install unknown devices into his ship, or the corruption within the Admiralty with Marcus attempting to start a war with the Klingons. But all the Khan stuff steals focus in every scene, meaning none of the other ideas get room to breathe.
It’s the only one which I saw in the cinema where I haven’t gone back to revisit at home afterwards. I’m not sure your review changed my mind - how you described feeling about the Sacrifice Scene is how I felt about the whole film, unable to immerse myself because I could see every single filmmaking choice made far more clearly than the actual film.
Even shooting at NIF in LLNL kiiiinda bugged me, partly due to the size of the actual reaction chamber being so small compared to how warp cores usually are shown, plus I just couldn’t stop seeing 1970s lasers anachronistically being in the 2250s… even if they’re meant to be antimatter injectors and coolant lines or something. But that’s because I was extremely familiar with NIF already, so it gave me the kind of “misplaced mundane object” reaction that most people got from the Budweiser scenes in “2009”. I presume anyone who didn’t already know NIF very well probably found it more than suitably technical and futuristic.
Kaitlyn, we're not friends anymore 😠
😘xx
One of the theories was instead of him being Khan, he was meant to be Gary Mitchell from the TOS second pilot, it would’ve made sense as Kirk and Mitchell was close friends and for him to secretly work for section 31 might’ve been a better villain.
Using Khan was a easy an option.
I agree.
Agree with you about Gary Mitchell being a non-starter. Perhaps Khan was an attractive idea but if you don't nail the story execution...well here we are.
I think it would have worked better if Harrison just wasn't Khan. He could still be genetically enhanced and still involved in the Eugenics Wars, but the character's just not going to have the same impact in this timeline - old school fans will compare him to Montalban and the character has no meaning for newcomers. I think the thing to do would have been to keep the story as is (remove the direct references to Wrath - I really hated the "It's that KHAAAAN bit but this time it's Kirk do you see what we did there" bit) and then build up to the possibility of Khan in a future movie.
I think he still could be Khan, but that would envolve basically laying out a story that somehow explains that due to the change in the timeline Khan hadn't previously crossed paths with Kirk & Co. Even better idea would have been to make him Khan's right hand man hell bent on fulfilling Khan's vision/will after Khan was killed off (perhaps by other separatist Augments). That would have been a great plot twist. Everyone thinks he is Khan, until they reveal that Khan is long dead (maybe at the hands of the Nerada & Nero while he was waiting for Spock) and Cumberbatch is actually Joachim from Wrath of Khan just carrying out Khans dying wish. This would put it in line with events following the Augments trilogy in Enterprise with enough of a twist that it could be explained by Nero altering the timeline without diluting the story. It could have been explained as Marcus secretly leading Section 31 and building the Vengenace as a means of an end of possible future wars coming off the heals of the encounter with the borg enhanced Nerada and the Earth/Romulan war - essentially fast tracking Starfleets militarization that didn't occur until Wolf 359 in the prime timeline. Instead of Joachim hiding his people in torpedoes, perhaps he has a cloaked, heavily modified Klingon bird of prey or D7 (maybe a Romulan warbird) with them on board (like in the Augments) leading to a triple threat showdown between Joachim, the Enterprise and the Vengeance, in which Kirk and Joachim team up to take care of Admiral Marcus (whom for the sake of the story would have needed to commit some horrendous crime to unite Kirk & the Augments before Joachim turns on the Enterprise in a final battle. We could have had the Enterprise separate the saucer and had some epic battle, that advances character development, keeps the plot connected to unaltered past events while connecting to the effects Nero had on the timeline, all the while telling a new fresh story that lures fans in, throws the curveball of Joachim, gives fan homage and concludes with an epic space battle resulting in Kirk & Co. putting their timeline a bit more in synch with the Prime timeline while still maintaining their own contained timeline. Hell, maybe Marcus from the Kelvin timeline was actually from the Terran Empire (explains his focus on combat, war, killing) and the threat of the mirror universe is enough to unite Kirk & Joachim?? This would be a movie worth seeing in my opinion.
I know it’s off topic but Super8 seems to get a lot of hate as a paint by the numbers 80’s sci-fi flick but I personally really enjoyed the film. It’s one of Abram’s few films I actually like.
Binged your retrospectives a few weeks back and have been eagerly waiting this instalment.
I remember in the cinema I was enjoying this up until Kirk went down to engineering near the end and I was like "oh they're not are they...oh, they are..."
I still don't hate it, but it's not high ranking for me. I still wish they had done what I'd hoped, and had Cumberbatch just be John Harrison - there is no reason why Harrison couldn't have been a member of Khan's crew. Still an augment, still dangerous, and still useful for the Admiral. They could easily have come up with a reason why they awakened Harrison and not Khan. Would have been a neat take.
If John Harrison was maybe Khan's chief scientific advisor or military engineering specialist or something similar.
Still superhumanly fast and strong, but it would help to explain why he was so good at designing weapons.
My biggest gripe about Into Darkness is the manufactured tension as the Enterprise spirals into the Earth out of control before the crew saves the day. Um.....like there's absolutely no other ships or assistance from Earth to keep the Enterprise from crashing? And the attack from the Vengeance between Earth and the moon goes completely unchallenged or even noticed by Earth? That's my pet peeve.
Cumberbatch's character would have better served the trilogy if he were Joachim, Khan's right-hand man, rather than Khan himself.
And where would be Khan in all of this? Missing. When Starfleet/Section 31 finds the Botany Bay and its crew in stasis, Khan's sleeper tube is vacant. Someone (Nero possibly) awoke Khan many years earlier and set him loose in the galaxy.
Joachim is awoken and told of this situation, and he agrees to provide his knowledge in order to secure assistance in finding where Khan has been all this time.
We would get the sublime horror of wondering what Khan is planning as well as the chance to cast an older actor (relative to Kirk and company) with the gravitas to carry off the character of Khan.
Yeah, this movie is kinda messy. Also, Khan states that Starfleet found the Botany Bay while searching for a new homeworld for the last Vulcans, but Spock Prime had already located one so shouldn't he know about this?
It's been awhile since I've sat down and watched the Kelvin Timeline movies, not out of dislike necessarily, but they are not movies I tend to return to often, which pretty much describes my feelings towards all of JJ Abrams movies. Visually they are spectacular, the music is great, there is some funny dialogue, the action is cool and the acting is usually up to a high standard.
The biggest reason they still lack re-watch value for me is that they don't quite scratch that itch in terms of what I want to see out of Star Trek content. ST is at it's best when it's using the sci-fi genre to make deep commentary on humanity, intimately explore fascinating characters, or present us with delightfully weird stories that wouldn't be possible to tell in any other format.
This isn't to say there isn't SOME attempt at those things, especially in Into Darkness, but the pressures of having to conform to the action blockbuster format and the questionable understanding of the franchise from the creative team ultimately holds them back from being more than just fun diversions.
I have warmed to Into Darkness over the years but it's still a movie I have trouble getting 100% behind on. I honestly think the first 2/3 of ID is enjoyable and interesting, but after they leave Qo'noS is were the plot begins to falter. The Khan twist was severely misguided on so many levels and the movie gets so bogged down in in-you-face references that it undercuts any emotional investment despite the efforts of the actors. The magic blood plot point and how the whole "imminent war with the Klingons" thread gets practically forgotten about by the end didn't help matters.
I'm in the camp that actually really liked Benedict Cumberbatch performance, but I just wish they had given him an original character (or Gary Mitchell) to play. Having Cumberbatch play a version of Khan that is both physically and characteristically unrecognizable from the original was just a great disservice to both him and the fans.
it's very much a 3.5/5 movie for me, far from the worst ST movie in my book but misses out of being one of the better entries.
Something that you didn't touch on was Abrams after thoughts on the film and insight into how the screenplay was really developed.
In an interview with Buzzfeed two years after the film's release, Abrams addressed some of the film's shortcomings. He thought that the dynamic for Kirk and Spock's relationship in the film "wasn’t really clear." For keeping the identity of Khan a secret prior to the film's release, Abrams felt he "was trying to preserve the fun for the audience, and not just tell them something that the characters don’t learn for 45 minutes into the movie, so the audience wouldn’t be so ahead of it." In the end, Abrams recognized that "there were certain things I was unsure of.... Any movie...has a fundamental conversation happening during it. And [for Into Darkness,] I didn’t have it.... [The problems with the plot] was not anyone’s fault but mine, or, frankly, anyone’s problem but mine. [The script] was a little bit of a collection of scenes that were written by my friends.... And yet, I found myself frustrated by my choices, and unable to hang my hat on an undeniable thread of the main story. So then I found myself on that movie basically tap-dancing as well as I could to try and make the sequences as entertaining as possible.... I would never say that I don’t think that the movie ended up working. But I feel like it didn’t work as well as it could have had I made some better decisions before we started shooting.
In my headcanon, Cumberbatch did actually play Harrison, Khan's chief scientific advisor or military engineering specialist or something similar.
Marcus thaws out a few of Khan's Krew first, including Harrison. In order to protect his beloved leader, Harrison agrees to come up with new weapons and tactics for Admiral Marcus, and takes on the mantle of Khan himself and disguises the real Khan's identity.
A valiant attempt. Its sad how we have to turn to head cannon to stomach offerings like this.
@@adamb503
It's the same thing that fans like myself started doing since 1979 to explain why, for example, the Klingons looked so different with no explanation.
I thought the same. He wasn't Khan, just pretending to be.
I didn't notice that connection with Soldana learning Navi and then Klingon. Pretty cool
When Spock yelled "KHAAAAN!" My theater literally laughed out loud. I think that says it all.
You’re right-my theater loved it, too!!
@@LocalboyTNWhen he said "my name is khan!" Dun dun dummmm
Spoke and Kirk should have shrugged and said, "who is that? We havnt had space seed in this timr line."
Ridiculous script
tl;dr: When they get to Qo'Nos, the action is engaging, the VFX are lovely, the actors are good, and the music is excellent. It just makes no sense for those people to go to Qo'Nos. And it makes no sense for some of those people to be in this movie. And the consequences of the plot wouldn't even make sense to anybody with as many working brain cells as my long deceased great grandparents. It's an adequate excuse to eat some popcorn. Or maybe something to play in the background with the dialog turned off while chatting at a party. It's the kind of story that takes time to sink in. Days after you watch it, you'll be getting a snack at 3:00 AM, and another reason it's stupid will dawn on you.
A well researched and fairly presented piece. I've really been enjoying this series and I appreciate how balanced you were in discussing this film. That being said, it was centered on a film which features prominently in my Top-5 Worst Movies of All Time list, and is lightyears away from my next least-favourite outing in the Trek franchise.
Yeah, it's the same for me. I really don't like Nemesis but the films doesn't make me angry or anything - it's just a crappy attempt at making Star Trek. Whilst Into Darkness represents (in my opinion) the worst elements of modern film making.
@@Its__Good Yeah nemesis and final frontier might be bad in their own ways but as far as I'm concerned they at least get my respect for at least trying to do their own thing even if it didn't work. Into Darkness however feels worse to me because it's riding the coattails of a better movie.
@@moonbeans7042 that's the primary crux of my issue with the film. "You've masterfully reset the board to allow you to tell new stories with the same pieces. Why are you making the same moves as the last player did in their game?"
@@moonbeans7042 this. I can hate-watch the two you called out to laugh at them, but I’m not sure if I could do that with _Into Darkness._ The actual construction of the filmmaking was way too obvious to me and pulled me out of my willing suspension of disbelief.
If Wrath of Khan didn't exist, and this was a story we had never seen done before, I think we'd all find it very good ... but as it is, we end up with a clunky attempt to tell a legendary story in a different way. I enjoy it, but I'll never understand WHY they took this route ...
Because JJ, Kurtzman and friends are creatively bankrupt.
I didn't really care that he was Khan. I mean, I don't associate the character here with the TOS character. They're just too different. My issues are more about how set-piece-focused the script is. They have visual moments they want to hit, then they write a script that connects them: ENT rising out of the water, Khan fighting Klingons, Enterprise being shot up, Starship crashing into a city, Spock fighting Khan. How we get to these moments or why they exist storywise isn't that important. And there's little happening on an emotional level. That's why the Kirk death fails. Not because it's a reversal of the famous scene, but it fails because we don't know these versions of the characters. So we don't feel much of anything in the scene
If WoK didn’t exist, Cumberbatch going _”KHHAAAAAANNNN”_ would make precisely zero sense. It’s nonsense unless you understand the gravity behind the name.
Somewhat, but it wouldn't mean that Khan's nonsense plan sucked any less.
If Wrath of Khan hadn’t been made, Into Darkness would be a fundamentally different movie. The entire finale is a riff on WOK, and I doubt this writing team would’ve come up with it on their own.
I think I have said this before, but I'll say it again. If I was a script doctor for the movie I would not have left Khan in it. I would have Marcus say that they were going to defrost the leader, Khan, but knew he would would be too dangerous and they weren't stupid. Instead, they went with the more benign Harrison who worked with regular humans before he went into deep freeze. Harrison would behave just as he did in the movie. This keeps Khan out of the movie and pushes up any sense of his dangerousness and...maybe use later if they really, really wanted to.
The clumsy reveal of Khan is gone and Marcus' trust of the more friendly Harrison is shown to be misplaced.
The death of Kirk and revival using magic blood would have to go and be replaced by something else. The idea that the doctor was experimenting with Harrison's blood during a battle is stupid and forced.
I have to wonder why Orci and Kurtzman didn’t stand firm on it being a bad idea… I guess they just got tired of hearing it from “Lost” Guy.
Kurzman and Abrams faces are so lovable. Like, with a hammer.
Abrams is like all of his type. He's an inept visionless director who uses flashy CGI in order to blind the audience from that fact, a' la George Lucas.
I don't think George Lucas is visionless..
Also, he views the franchises he's given control of as a sandbox to play in, not a treasured history that people care about. He just wades in and does his own thing, with no thought to legacy or anything else. Consequently, he ruins everything he touches.
@@dentoncrimescene He had the original idea of doing an updated Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon clone, yes, but other than that he's proven himself to be pretty much clueless. Even ANH was ripped from things like Hidden Fortress, Where Eagles Dare, and 633 Squadron, with 30% of the finished script (i.e. all of the memorable lines) being written by ghost writers. His major redeeming quality is in business management, which I've found to be superb.
@@VinceLyle2161 You mean like the Sequel Trilogy? Yes, I can see that. If it were me I would have treated both franchises with ultra respect, and definitely wouldn't have mutilated them like Abrams did. Lucas had done enough damage to the Star Wars movies with the PT. Abrams though had a chance to almost start afresh, but instead what we got was truly dire.
@@white-dragon4424 All art is derivative.
They really could have had their cake and eaten it if they just made John Harrison one of Khan's fellow superhumans frozen aboard the SS Botany Bay. Benedict Cumberbatch is great in the role and very intense and threatening, but as you mentioned he just has no relation to Khan's previous portrayals.
The only wrath of khan callback should have been the scene at the end where John Harrison is refrozen, except they pan over and you see Ricardo Montalbán frozen next to him. That would have been a nice way to pay homage to the wrath of khan whilst telling its own story.
“As part of the marketing efforts, Abrams’ trademark mystery-box secrecy made sure Kahn’s involvement in the story would be kept secret from the audiences until the movie was released.”
Uh… I don’t know ANYone who didn’t call this one. Everyone knew this was Kahn before the movie came out.
Just because the Hollywood-people didn’t explicitly say it was Kahn, doesn’t mean that the audience didn’t know.
The studios really do believe the pop culture version of fans as childish easily pleases morons who live with their mommies.
Some people just avoid trailers and discussion before watching films. I generally do (I don’t see the point, usually all that happens is it spoils things) and didn’t know about Khanberbatch.
Since JJ is the director (rather than a mere actor like U-know-who) his repeated lies about KHAN is totally indefencible indeed. The public then was justifiably pissed off when JJ was revealed as a prevaricator.
I remember the discussions immediately following the release of '09, where would JJ take the franchise next?
Lots of people figured it would be Khan, as the obvious subject for a director like Abrams, who's gone on record multiple times, he never liked Star Trek because it was too "philosophical".
Low hanging fruit.
I remember thinking that John Harrison couldn't possibly be Kahn, because I thought that it would be such a terrible idea to even try to do Kahn, so why would he be. Naive little me.
I saw it in the IMAX on opening day, excited as all get out. I remember feeling like it was letting me down a bit during the first two acts of the film, but I managed to stick with it and try to enjoy it despite my creeping reservations.
However... this was all well and good on my part.... until that death switch "remix" scene you pointed out. The second that Spock yelled "KHAAAAAN!", I instantly felt myself checking out of the rest of the film permanently. It was just way too on-the-nose fan service-y and from then on I just could not seem to care what else was happening.
I have revisited the film since then, and unfortunately, the problems and nitpicks I initially had upon first viewing had only grown to the point wherein I just can't ever get into the film anymore in any way.
Which is too bad because all of the positive aspects you pointed out in this excellent (as usual) retrospective are indeed great components to the film. But for me, it just ended up drowning itself in nonsensical plotting and extremely unsubtle nods to to TWOK.
Anyway, I enjoyed this (as usual) and I greatly look forward to your retro vid on STAR TREK BEYOND, which is actually my fave of the 3 (thus far) Kelvin Timeline films. Cheers!
This was the first and only Star Trek Movie I seen in theaters.
Hell yeah man! Getting close to the end of current Star TreK! Live long and most definitely prosper! You rock!
I love that Khan here is so lethally efficient, as probably all Augments tend to be in general. They’re meant to be super soldiers after all and thus I love that this film shows that not only is their intelligence superior but also their strength and their ability to fight. As the Augments were created in the capitalist time of World War III, I like to think that they were especially bred for that purpose by some private military company.
Thank you for this interesting take on WoK2. I think I'm in the camp of "old enough to have watched TOS, grew up with TNG, loved and then rediscovered VOY/DS9" that is still happy to have Star Trek content.
I love the TOS reimagined movies because they create excitement for new generations. As a Trekkie, I like the continuity, and still can understand why some don't like this movie. I have some Trek shows I don't like, I hate Picard because of what they've done to a character I admired growing up, for example. Discovery I can't get into yet, though I tried and may go back to it soon. The Orville was fun to a point, and haven't watched Lower Decks yet. That being said, I'm a Trekkie and I think you're doing a fantastic job of providing a balanced/nuanced view of the series/movies.
Spock's death in The Wrath of Khan works because both the characters and actors are calling on twenty years of personal history.
Kirk's death in Into Darkness was built on characters we barely knew, and actors who were far too young. The Deus Ex Machina ending was beyond parody. This film was an utter disaster from the very beginning of the script. They could have done literally anything, instead they chose to remake the best film in the franchise - something that not only was utterly pointless, but actually devalued the entire Kelvin timeline into something approaching the seriousness of Power Rangers. Not only that, it felt highly disrespectful to the original cast and then didn't even try to do justice to the material, replacing tension and the battle of will between Kirk and Khan by two super veteran actors in tight closed sets, with cgi nonsense action and belief killing evasion of logic. It was like watching a toddler trying to rebuild the golden gate bridge using stickle bricks. I remember sitting in the cinema in sheer disbelief that anyone could be so disrespectful of those that had gone before who were so clearly their betters, and I have yet to recover any respect for anyone involved. It was this movie alongside Indiana Jones 4 and Die Another Day which turned me from a movie lover into someone who would happily watch Hollywood burn.
I despise every second of it.
Your scathing review is.... apt and well-perceived. What a shame for this franchise.
Thank you!!
Making a decidedly un-Star-Trek-like Star Trek film and catering to the nostalgia of Star Trek fans was destined to not go over well. People like Star Trek because it's _not_ dumb Chris Nolan action, but _because_ it's intelligently designed and adventurous fun. There are parts of this film I think work great, but as a whole, it was a bad idea.
I really enjoy these retrospectives. You do a very good job with them and thank you. I found that death scene with Kirk and Spock such a slap in the face that it basically ruined the movie for me. Up until that point this version of Kirk and Spock hand earned that particular scene. That’s why it was so good in the original, because we had that long-term ability to see those characters working together built as friends and the love they shared. I was baffled by the need to use Khan as well.
Instead of Khan, he should have been Gary Mitchell.
I personally enjoyed all three of the new Trek movies, but I do completely agree about the Kirk death scene, I am always distracted with the thought of it being a remix from the Wrath of Khan. Overall though, I would still rank this pretty decently in my rankings for Star Trek Films
Love this movie! Been watching Trek for 30 years.
This is my favourite star trek movie period. Really don’t get why people dislike it. I loved Benedict cumberbatch as khan, a really great and sinister performance, and that scene with Alice Eve, phwoar..
John: I am Kahn Noonian Singh! Your arch enemy!
Kirk:....Dude, I don’t even know who you are.
Star Trek Into Darkness was the very first star trek I've seen. I wasn't a fan and went to see this in theater with a couple of friends. Because of that I had nothing to compare this movie with and I liked the movie. After watching this only I watched Star Trek (2009) and soon after that I started watching TNG and it was followed by all the star trek available up to then. although I've only seen Into Darkness only once, I have a soft spot for it
I always took the fact that Khan reveal his name while haming it up because the guy was a Conqueror in the old times. Also the guy has an Ego so big it could crush a Borg Cube.
For the most part Star Trek Into Darkness is actually a pretty decent film, even with the Khan stuff, what really knocks it down is the last 30 mins of the movie where they tried too hard to play into the Wrath of Khan references. The film would have been so much stronger if they’d let the story stand on its own, let the film be its own thing. It’s as Abrams said, they could do anything they wanted, even with Khan they could have told a different and new story. I always said the story should have focused on Admiral Marcus as the main villain, not shift at the last minute to be a fight against Khan. If they had kept the focus on the themes of militarization, it would have made for a much more solid story. The last 30 some minutes was really unnecessary. I don’t think the inclusion of Khan in this story was the issue but rather how they utilized him. If they had just told a new story with Khan, it would have been much better. The Kelvin timeline was always at its best when it was doing its own thing instead of relying on the past, it shouldn’t be afraid to make its own path.
Completely agree.
@404 TV That's your opinion man.
Your mention of fringe has made me really want a video from you, covering it. It's one of my favourites
Funny thing, even though I didn't see Wrath of Khan before Into Darkness I knew enough about it to understand the moment of Kirk dying if radiations and Spock yelling Khan's name. But I also understood immediately how bad and lazy it was. I immediately HATED the movie at this moment because of it, it felt like poor nostalgia or poor fan-service to me, even more useless than live-action remakes by Disney (it was before everyone understood that nostalgia-driven movies were becoming a thing, before we coined the term "legacyquel").
I LOVE the sequel Star Trek Beyond mostlybecause it doesn't try to be nostalgic.
I was never able to come to terms with Cumberbatch playing Khan. Montalbán was so superb in the original role that it just didn't work for me. I can still enjoy the movie though, by simply accepting Cumberbatch as 'The Antagonist' in the story rather than Khan.
And then there's the problem of them whitewashing Khan, who was supposed to be from India.
I always appreciated how making him a Sikh literally made Khan an Aryan Superman.
micro-nitpick, the lab is named Lawrence Livermore, that's 'liver' followed by 'more' rather than 'live' followed by 'more'
It's not just Khan, most scenes in the film lack apparent purpose. Same as the previous film, it seemed like the writing room was too many people, attempting to hit too many beats, maintain a constant cadence of action to keep the attention of the ADHD set, whilst also working backwards to rationalise certain ideas they perhaps should've given up on. It still boggles my mind how such messy, scatterbrained writing was ever greenlit, let alone successful.
This movie was my favorite of the trio, really showing why the temporal accords are a thing and what happens power grows without being checked by empathy or reason, something I always felt the reboot movie wanted to show but didn't really get across
18:40 I’m not sure JJ Abrams is very self aware because new really isn’t his forte.
I was disappointed that they never addressed how aliens and their biology might challenge the fundamental belief system that Khan bases his entire life around. He sees himself as superior to all others due to his physicality, yet Spock was his equal blow-for-blow.
Even when your being critical you can’t help gushing over the fact it’s Star Trek! Just can’t help being a Trekkie can ya!
I will say that the sets and location shots look too fantastic to be real, so seeing them behind the scenes (and actually being real) is jarring
I am not a fan of the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies, Benedict Cumberbatch was miscast as Kahn. I watch them but it is something about his style of directing that I am not a fan of.
Along with other problems, the way Kirk’s death is portrayed is simply absurd. To be specific, Spock’s reaction feels totally unearned and almost silly. Whether or not the scene is compared with Wrath of Khan in terms of performance, there simply hasn’t been enough time for these two characters to develop the bond that would justify Spock’s reaction. It looks completely ridiculous. I have zero problem with the idea of Spock loving Kirk and seeking justice for the death of his closest friend. But the scene is portrayed as if Kirk and Spock had been actual lovers for decades and Spock becomes a raging revenge monster. And let’s remember, Spock is Vulcan. Ripping his emotional control away once after the death of his mother was handled very carefully and with real thought put in to it. Here, it looks totally forced, overdone, and, well, like phony nonsense. At best, it’s a childish tantrum. At worst, like a 100% cynical attempt at audience manipulation. That, and the scene where Khan announces his name, pulled me completely from the film. I really liked most of the movie, but those two scenes, with the childish, unearned, third-grader drama bullshit, made it all just embarrassing.
using deus ex machina to literally cure death has to some of the worst writing in any movie period. I mean you literally just found a cure for death. Are you going to gloss that over and never speak of it again? The answer is yes haha.
@@purefoldnz3070,
Yes. Ung, that was bizarre too. I suppose it was better than the next film being “Stat Trek: The Search for Kirk” to spare us more repetition but why not just, well, not have the damn scene in the first place?
@@sfkeepay Yeah should have just made a brand new villain without the throwbacks to the Wrath of Khaaaaaaan!
you should have let me SLEEEP.
i love this one. and all your videos.
I actually like Into Darkness, for what it is it's fun and there has definitely been far worse Star Trek, but it did make me chuckle when I saw it in the cinema where Kirk leaves Spock in command saying that he could trust Spock to keep a cool head and was the best to be in command what ever might happen to him, then in the span of like 2 scenes Spock proceeds to entirely lose his shit...
This Spock always loses his shit. He's an emotional mess. You know. Just like the original( sarcasm included).
Star Trek Beyond was by far my favorite of the 3 and I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it.
Another great retrospective many thanks from an ancient Star Trek fan.
The Klingons, here, were pretty good. The prosthetics were only partial head and the actors could more easily emote and communicate through them.
I did/does make me legitimately want to see more pre-existing Trek aliens in the Kelvin timeline.
Ive always wanted to see Spock get emotional and punch people repeatedly. It really captures the essence of what it means to be Vulcan.
I loved this movie when it came out in theaters. The reveal of Khan midway through was a real shocker to me. I absolutely loved it. Then when you had the death scene between Spock and Kirk just like in ST:WoK but reversed, I just fell into tears! I walked out of the theater thinking this was one of the best Treks I'd ever seen. Now watching it 10 years on, it has dropped somewhat down the list of best Trek movies, but is still near the top. Up there with First Contact and Wrath of Khan.
0 intellect
Scotty calling kirk a mad bastard is the best bit of the film 😆
I will say that Benedict Cumberbatch’s Khan is the first Star Trek villain that I feel to be genuinely threatening, an imposing figure with a booming voice and facial expressions that will haunt you dreams and while the performance tiptoes on the line of credible and sometimes crosses into cartoonish it isn’t for long enough to be a true detriment to the overall characterization.
Another great video, Rowan! Love seeing these in my sub box!
They should have just cast a Sikh actor, called him Khan from the get go, and left out the weird callbacks. This movie would have been fucking great. It's insane to me that the reason they cast Khan as white is because they didn't want to make a person of color the bad guy. A strange, absurd excuse for whitewashing an important character that everyone loves.
No, it's not just that they didn't want a non-white villain (heck, Beyond had a black bad guy). It's just a consequence of this movie having arguably good themes, but trying to force an old plot into it. The film is an allegory for 9/11 and the War on Terror and having a brown-skinned terrorist as the villain could be seen as racist. If John Harrison stayed John Harrison or even Joachim then I guarantee the film would've worked much better.
@@YggdrasilAudio I think they should have stayed away from those themes to begin with. Besides, IMO Khan wasn't really the villain, Marcus was. Take out that BS at the end with the city being destroyed and make Khan what he should be, the story works IMO.